The revision of the Citizenship Act and the accelerated reform of the naturalization application approval process took effect on August 1, 2014. It is foreseeable through the revision of the new bill that in the next two years, the approval period for naturalization applications will be shortened to less than one year, and the backlog of cases will be reduced by 80%. So what specific measures will the Immigration Bureau take to achieve this expected effect?
First, the new ruling mechanism. Under the original ruling mechanism, the examination and approval is divided into three steps: the immigration officer accepts the application, the immigration officer transfers the application to the judge, and the judge passes the application back to the immigration officer. Under the new ruling mechanism, the three steps are reduced to one. The acceptance and decision of the case are all decided by the immigration officer, and no longer need to be judged by the judge. Moreover, the Immigration Service will strive to improve the ability to handle cases, from the original 30 judges to 450 immigration officers.
Second, the discretion of the integrity of the application. Different from before, any incomplete application from now on can be directly rejected by the ordinary staff of the receiving office of the naturalization office. It is not necessary to pass the naturalization review officer, and the applicant will not be able to get the application fee in the form of direct refusal. And all application documents. However, this does not affect the applicant’s application record. This method only hopes that the applicant can fill in the application more seriously, so that the immigration officials can improve the efficiency of examination and approval and make rational use of resources.
Again, changes to the court pre-trial and appeal procedures. In the past, appeals to immigration officials were up to the federal courts, but now, immigration officials have new mandates to decide which cases require court pre-trial and which cases can appeal to higher courts.
Finally, the discretion to reject the application. Under the previous system, the Immigration Department did not have clear discretion, and only rejected the application if the applicant did not take the citizenship test or did not attend the appointment. However, the Immigration Bureau now has a clearer discretion. During the period from accepting the application to the applicant’s oath, the applicant’s right to dismiss the application can be driven as long as the applicant’s materials do not match or do not attend the appointment.