Citizenship Process To Get Overhaul

A major accounting-consulting firm was hired Thursday to redesign the troubled process by which immigrants become U.S. citizens. Justice Department officials have begun to denaturalize 68 new citizens they now say should not have been eligible.

The $4.3 million, two-year contract was awarded to Coopers & Lybrand, one of the nation’s “big six” accounting-consulting firms.

“I think it’s clear that the system is … much in need of repair,” Attorney General Janet Reno told her weekly news conference.

The Citizenship U.S.A. project begun in the spring of 1995 has become politically controversial. Some 1.1 million immigrants were made citizens as part of what the Clinton administration described as an effort to clear a large backlog of applications it inherited from the Bush administration.

Republicans in Congress have charged that the program was a hurry-up effort to create new citizens who might vote Democratic in last year’s presidential election. Administration officials deny that.

Both sides now agree that citizenship was bestowed on some aliens whose past crimes should have made them ineligible.