Ladd says she knows of several faculty members applying for citizen status who have had similar difficulties with their fingerprints and the INS.
In the past year, the INS has become more meticulous in scrutinizing applications in response to pressure from Congress.
Republican legislators last year accused Democrats of racing prospective citizens through the application process to increase Democratic votes in that fall's congressional elections. The Republicans alleged that the INS was not properly checking fingerprints or prior criminal records of the applicants.
"So now they are checking [closely]...which means lots of confusion and time delays," Ladd says.
The INS states that "an unprecedented backlog" of citizen requests in 1996, numbering about 1.2 million, did not allow the agency to scrutinize applicants as closely as the agency would have liked.
Reform or Abolition?
In early August, a federal panel, empowered with a mandate for INS reform, instead recommended the abolishment of the agency.
Under the panel's plan, the State Department would handle all aspects of legal immigration and would administer the citizenship process. The Justice Department would assume direct responsibility for dealing with illegal immigrants and border control, as well as CIPRIS.
In an interview, Rob Koon, an INS spokesperson, says the future of the agency depends largely on the will of the Clinton administration.
Still, Koon says he thinks the INS "can do the job as we are currently structured."
As recently as last Friday, for example, the INS announced a revision of its much-criticized naturalization process.
"They've gone through a complete reengineering of the naturalization process and, of course, adding in the changes with the fingerprint policies," Koon says.
Koon declines to elaborate on why the agency changed the fingerprinting system, but said that the new naturalization process had long been a concern of INS Commissioner Doris Meissner.
Even if the INS is dissolved, the CIPRIS program and its nationwide evolution would still continue, as mandated by the 1996 law.
Meanwhile, Malin and Harvard's international student officers say they will do their best to help foreign students sort out their rights and responsibilities under the new regulations.
"The stakes are higher now," Emerson says. "We're here to help, but we may hit some situations where we're not going to be able to help," he says.