New immigration office offers one-stop service

DURHAM — The new Triangle office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that opened today will serve as a model for the agency as it modernizes its facilities across the country, acting director Jonathan Scharfen said.

"The whole idea of this is to improve our services," Scharfen said at the building's ribbon-cutting. "This is a new model of how we're doing business."

Other CIS branches, including the one in Charlotte that until now has been the only one in North Carolina, have services scattered in several buildings at different locations. Green card and citizenship applicants might have to go to two or three different places to pick up forms, get fingerprinted or be interviewed.

The CIS office that opened off Miami Boulevard in Research Triangle Park today has all those services in one place.

Scharfen said the new office is expected to handle 400 applicants a day. With 35 employees, it almost doubles the number of CIS workers in the state and should help speed up processing for North Carolina applicants trying to become citizens or be declared permanent residents.

North Carolina’s immigrant population increased 274 percent during the 1990s, with Latinos accounting for 27 percent of the state’s growth, said Ana Santiago, spokeswoman for the agency in the Southeast. North Carolina also has fast-growing Indian and Vietnamese populations, Santiago said. The state has more than 430,000 foreign-born residents, she said.

To celebrate the opening of the Triangle office, the CIS held a naturalization ceremony for more than 60 U.S. military service members from North Carolina.