Some immigrants applying for a Colorado identification card or public aid are waiting a week or more for the results of a mandated federal identity check that used to take only a few hours.
The federal computer system being used to confirm a person’s legal presence in the U.S. isn’t keeping up with the increasing volume of state agency requests, Colorado director of revenue M. Michael Cooke said.
In the worst case, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements check took more than two months to clear an applicant, Cooke said.
“It’s a combination of the volume and the federal government’s inability to keep up with the workload,” Cooke said. “We’re telling people it will take a few weeks, but it’s been a week or less for most.”
The delays are taxing the patience of applicants whose only fault, social- service providers say, is being an immigrant.
“We’re seeing that the lines are much longer, the waits are terribly long and the process has become very cumbersome to people,” said Carmen Carrillo, executive director of Mi Casa Resource Center for Women.
“You have to work at it to stay on it and get to the front of the line,” she said. “It’s been a hardship on people.”
Others say the wait is creating undue anxiety for public-aid recipients.
“In the past you just signed a piece of paper and it was processed,” said Laurie Harvey, executive director of the Center for Work Education and Employment, a nonprofit group that works with welfare recipients. “If they don’t get the approval now in the time period, it’s possible their welfare case could go into closure, which means they have to start all over. That’s nerve-racking to wait.”
The slowdown is partly due to an onslaught of applications for state-issued identification cards since Aug. 1, the date a state law went into effect requiring SAVE checks on all applicants for public aid or immigrants seeking a Colorado ID card or driver’s license.
The state has issued nearly 27,000 ID cards since then, 20 percent more than it predicted it would dispense.
On any given day, dozens of state requests are waiting for SAVE approval. Most are processed quickly, but about one in five will get backlogged and take longer to process, largely because of questions with the documents, Cooke said.
Some slowdowns are the result a simple misspelling, while longer waits may be because an immigrant’s documents don’t match federal immigration records.
Information critical to the background and legal-presence check, such as certified arrival and departure dates, isn’t being input into the SAVE system fast enough. That’s causing slowdowns as well.
“The bureau of customs and immigration services tell us they are behind in putting the information in there,” Cooke said. “That means applicants either have to undergo a second check or have to wait for the system to catch up.”
Other problems have included immigrants’ waiting until the last minute to renew critical paperwork with customs officials.
The applicants, Cooke said, are then “expecting it to be in there and happen overnight, and it just doesn’t.”
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
