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‘A country worth fighting for’

Oct- 6-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

SEAN COCKERHAM; The News Tribune

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The insurgents have shot at Pvt. Stepan Provorov. They sent a mortar within 15 feet of the Stryker he was riding in.

That isn’t all the Fort Lewis-based soldier is worried about. Provorov is struggling to get his U.S. citizenship so that he can bring his wife and children from Russia to America.

Provorov’s commanders in Baghdad have written letters and visited immigration offices in a vain attempt to speed up the process.

“We’re getting to the point where we have exhausted every resource and it’s frustrating,” said Lt. Craig Coppock of DuPont, Provorov’s platoon leader in Baghdad. “All there needs to be is for someone to say OK. No one can tell us why that can’t happen.”

Provorov, 30, joined the Army last year and applied for his citizenship. He had his interview in May and passed the tests of English, U.S. history and government. Provorov also has documentation indicating the FBI finished its check.

But he is still being told he doesn’t qualify as an American. The hang-up appears to be a separate background check that is conducted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Provorov contacted Congressman Adam Smith, D-Tacoma. Ruth Clapp, an aide to Smith, told him in an e-mail there is almost nothing a congressional office can do to speed up a background check.

Clapp told him all the people who have asked her for help with background checks eventually got the immigration benefit they wanted.

“Sadly, many of them had to wait a very long time – several years in some cases,” she wrote.

The last word Provorov got was from Shelly Langlais with the Department of Homeland Security. She said in an Aug.7 e-mail that there was nothing to report but she’d contact him when his case was ready to finish processing.

Langlais did not respond to a News Tribune request for information on the case.


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