NEW YORK, NY November 24, 2005 —Federal immigration authorities in New York have processed 24 percent more citizenship and residency applications this year than they did last year. But there still working through a big backlog. WNYC's Cindy Rodriguez reports:

Reporter: If you apply for permanent residency or citizenship you still have to wait up to 3 years for your application to be completed. But authorities say they've been able to speed things up by paying for more overtime and by sending work to districts in California and Illinois that are less busy. Sean Saucier is a spokesman for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services:

Saucier: We had about fifty of these experienced adjudication officers brought in from other districts and that's on top of temporary workers that are coming online right now.

Reporter: 170,000 applications were completed this year. Saucier says the agency's goal is to cut wait times to six months by the end of next year. Some local immigrant advocates praised improvements but say the agency still needs to track applications better and keep up with address changes. For WNYC, I'm Cindy Rodriguez.