The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on the thousands of would-be citizens who are caught in the U.S. government's backlog of naturalization applications.

The newspaper reports:

Nearly 320,000 people were waiting for their name checks to be completed as of Aug. 7, including more than 152,000 who had been waiting for more than six months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. More than 61,000 had been waiting for more than two years.

Applicants for permanent residency or citizenship have lost jobs, missed out on student loans and in-state tuition, and been unable to vote or bring relatives into the country. The delays have prompted scores of lawsuits around the country.

The National Immigrant Justice Center, along with Chicago's Competition Law Group and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, filed one of the first of those lawsuits, Alsamman et. al. v. USCIS. Data received through a Freedom of Information Act requests shows that once naturalization applicants have completed their citizenship examinations and interviews, they can then wait in limbo for months or sometimes years as they await the results of FBI background checks.

"It is not a check of your name," NIJC's Director of Litigation Chuck Roth told the LA Times. "It is a file review of anywhere your name happens to appear. It has just created a giant bureaucratic mess."