CREATING CITIZENS SOONER; INS SPEEDS UP PROCESS OF APPROVING APPLICANTS.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

When legal U.S. residents were faced with losing federal benefits, North Hills resident Miguel Contreras Vallarta decided it was time that he became a U.S. citizen. But he had one major worry.

Contreras, who emigrated from Mexico, had heard the horror stories of friends who applied for citizenship only to wait as long as two years before the Immigration and Naturalization Service processed their paperwork.

But thanks to measures adopted by the INS to address the nationwide backlog of 1.8 million people waiting to become Americans, immigrants like Contreras are waiting dramatically shorter periods and are, in fact, naturalizing ahead of those applicants caught in the backlog.

``Thank God I was lucky . . . the process wasn't delayed,'' said Contreras, 30, who waited about 10 months before taking his citizenship oath last month.

``I'm very happy because I've been in this country for 16 years, and I wanted to take advantage of the situation since they were taking away benefits from residents.''

Immigration agencies like the San Juan Macias Orientation Immigrant Center in Pacoima said the reduced waiting period is unprecedented. Immigrants who applied at the center's citizenship drive last May are today U.S. citizens, according to center spokesman Felipe Kofman.

``As far as new applicants are concerned, the steps that the INS has taken are incredible from what they were,'' Kofman said.

Measures the INS has implemented to reduce the backlog - which in the Los Angeles district numbers at 382,500 applications - include hiring 300 employees nationwide to ensure applications are complete, creating a national telephone customer service center and computerized fingerprinting services, and centralizing the INS' 25 million paper files to reduce file retrieval time.

While computerized fingerprinting services have allowed the INS to speed up the citizenship process, that same automated system is causing problems in the process as well.

This month, INS service centers mistakenly sent 5,000 notices nationwide informing applicants who filed before an increased naturalization fee took effect that they owed an additional $130 and that their citizenship process would be delayed until they paid.

The citizenship processing fee hike from $95 to $225 went into effect Jan. 15. In fact, those applicants, 2,500 of whom reside in the INS Los Angeles District, did file before Jan. 15 and were only obligated to pay the $95 fee, said Jane Arellano, assistant district director for adjudications in Los Angeles.

``It was an automated system error, and possibly somebody wasn't careful when they generated the notices,'' Arellano said Friday.

The INS plans to send a second notice after Feb. 1 informing applicants that the proper fee was received, that the application process will continue and that no additional money is required, Arellano said.