Bloomberg, 25-Apr-08 By Miles Weiss
Mohamed El-Erian, the global bond manager who helps run Pacific Investment Management Co., is taking an increasingly common path to U.S. citizenship -- suing the federal government.
El-Erian, co-chief executive officer of Newport, California-based Pimco, sued last month to get his request to become a citizen approved after a two-year delay, according to a complaint filed in a California federal court on March 5. His application has been hung up while the government runs standard security checks.
The complaint shows how the federal government's effort to prevent terrorists from entering the U.S. is slowing down the naturalization process, immigration lawyers said. El-Erian previously ran Harvard University's $34.9 billion endowment, worked as a deputy director at the International Monetary Fund and now serves on the U.S. Treasury Department's borrowing advisory committee.
``It can rise to the level of absurdity,'' David Leopold, an attorney at Cleveland-based Leopold & Associates Co. who specializes in immigration law. ``I have seen people who are distinguished professors, physicians and those who have been working in quasi-public roles get bogged down.''
El-Erian declined to comment. He is also co-chief investment officer of Pimco, a unit of Munich-based Allianz SE that has $746 billion of assets under management.
FBI, Homeland Security
According to the complaint, El-Erian, 49, was born to an Egyptian diplomat and his French wife in the U.S. and is currently a citizen of France; an IMF publication said in 2004 that he is a citizen of Egypt as well. The complaint, filed against five government officials, including FBI director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, alleges that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and other agencies have ``improperly delayed'' El-Erian's application, which was filed in September 2005.
Under federal law, if the immigration service fails to decide on citizenship within 120 days of interviewing the applicant, that person can ask a court to either rule on the naturalization request or to compel the government to take action. Since October 2005, about 6,550 of these ``mandamus'' cases have been filed, according to William Wright, a spokesman for the citizenship and immigration services in Washington.
El-Erian interviewed for his naturalization application on Jan. 31, 2006, according to his complaint, and successfully passed his English language, U.S. history and civics tests. El- Erian's attorney was told that the bond manager had yet to clear the FBI's ``name check,'' one of three mechanisms used by the government for investigating an applicant's background, the complaint said.
`Positive Proof' Required
The FBI asks government agencies such as the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to check an applicant's name against lists they maintain of suspected terrorists, said Elise Healy, an attorney who has practiced immigration law since 1991. The government several years ago began requiring ``positive proof'' than a naturalization applicant is not a security or terrorism risk, Healy said.
``This led to enormous backlogs of approvable cases who are waiting for the government databases that have to be checked,'' said Healy, a partner at the newly formed Dallas law firm Spencer Crain Cubbage Healy & McNamara PLLC.
About 72,000 name checks were outstanding for more than six months as of March 2008, said Wright, the citizenship and immigration services spokesman. His agency and the FBI have drawn up a plan to ensure that, by June 2009, 98 percent of all name checks are processed within 30 days; as an interim step, they are aiming to complete all checks that have been outstanding for more than three years by the end of May.
Neither Thomas Vanasse of Wildes & Weinberg PC in New York nor attorney Douglas Kuber in Los Angeles, who are both representing El-Erian, returned telephone calls seeking comment.
The case is Mohamed Aly El-Erian v. Jane Arellano, 08cv247, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Santa Ana).
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