Citizenship Revocation Fought Immigrants Find Common Cause In Battling Crime Question On Form
Eliseo Verduzco-Galvan was stunned when he was notified in August that his U.S. citizenship was being revoked because he lied on his naturalization application.
Galvan, 50, of Granger says he was unaware he had been convicted in 1981 of a misdemeanor related to his illegal entry into the country. The native of Colima, Mexico, a farmworker who has lived in the Yakima Valley for 20 years, was naturalized in December 1995.
“It was a complete shock,” Galvan said through an interpreter. “I went through the whole process and did everything legally and disclosed my history and suddenly after all that time, they want to take away my citizenship.”
Galvan is now among 10 immigrants across the country who have filed a lawsuit against the federal government challenging the way the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service can revoke an immigrant’s citizenship.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, names U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and the INS as defendants.
Seattle lawyer Robert Gibbs says he took Galvan’s case thinking it was unique.
“I was flabbergasted to hear my guy’s case wasn’t an unusual one,” Gibbs said. “I started talking to lawyers around the country and the more we talked about it, the more surprised we were and we realized it was a bigger problem.”
The problem potentially extends to more than 5,500 naturalized immigrants whom the INS suspects of failing to disclose prior arrests or convictions when they applied for naturalization, Gibbs said. He plans to seek class-action status for the lawsuit.
On the four-page INS naturalization application, immigrants are asked, “Have you ever been arrested, cited, charged, indicted, convicted, fined or imprisoned for breaking any law or ordinance excluding traffic regulations?”
While their crimes may not have been serious enough to prevent the immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens, failure to disclose them is considered perjury and can cost them their citizenship.
The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include a California homemaker who was arrested when police mistook a house plant for a marijuana plant, though she was never charged with a crime. There is also an Oregon house painter who failed to mention two traffic-related arrests, and a Microsoft employee from Bellevue who didn’t tell INS she had lived in Utah before moving to Washington.
The immigrants in question were identified last year in a federal audit of recent naturalizations, part of an effort by INS to boost quality control of its naturalization process. So far, about 1,200 immigrants have been notified that their citizenship will be revoked if they do not appeal, Gibbs said.
In Galvan’s case, he was unaware that he had been convicted in 1981 of re-entering the United States illegally after being deported in 1973, Gibbs said.
He had hearings before both a federal judge and the INS, but did not understand the proceedings or realize he had been convicted of a crime because the INS let him stay and then gave him a green card, Gibbs said. The lawyer said he did not know whether Galvan had a translator during the proceedings.
INS allowed Galvan to stay to take care of his sick child and later granted him a green card, or permanent-resident status.
“I had never intended to mislead anyone about my history,” Galvan said. “I tried to be as straightforward as possible with my understanding of what the situation was.”