A blind man has been denied U.S. citizenship after immigration agents failed to provide him with Braille during his exam. Lucio Delgado took his citizenship exam on May 21, 2019, only to fail because of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services's (USCIS) lack of accommodations available for the visually impaired. Delgado, 23, was born blind and came to the U.S. six years ago; he is legally blind under Illinois state law.
Despite taking a vision exam by an optometrist to prove his blindness and requesting to be given the test in Braille on his application, Delgado was provided with large print as opposed to Braille. An agent told him that while his request was received, USCIS did not have Braille available, The Washington Post reported. “I’m like, I don’t read large print,” Delgado told the Post. “I’m totally blind.” Yet, despite clarifying he was “totally blind” the agent provided him “three attempts to read a sentence,” USCIS wrote in a letter detailing Delgado’s results.
“Unfortunately, you were unable to read a sentence in the English language,” the letter Delgado received from USCIS last month said. “Regrettably, you were unable to achieve a passing score on the reading portion of the naturalization test.”
This incident only highlights the barriers disabled immigrants face when attempting to acquire citizenship. While the agent told Delgado he could come back for a second interview after visiting an ophthalmologist to certify he is 100% blind, Delgado who does not have health insurance said he could not afford to see the specialist, the Post reported. Certification from an ophthalmologist is the only way the reading portion of the test can be waived. “I really wasn’t expecting not to be provided that very basic accommodation,” Delgado said.
Although disabled immigrants are allowed to petition for medical waivers on certain aspects of a test, these petitions are only successful if accommodations are available. At the time of Delgado’s exam Braille, the accommodation he needed, was not an option. USCIS now offers the test in Braille to blind applicants, but prior to November 2019 this accommodation was not available, a spokesperson told the Post.
Delgado’s experience is not an isolated issue. In 2018, USCIS identified barriers immigrants faced in a self-evaluation report. The report resulted from complaints by the public for “failure to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities,” including materials in Braille and sign language interpreters. “U.S.C.I.S. has policies in place to ensure accommodations are provided for people with disabilities when requested and we make every effort to ensure that these policies are followed at all times,” the agency told The New York Times in a statement Friday. “If U.S.C.I.S. becomes aware of an error in adhering to these policies, we make every effort to ensure corrections are made.”
According to Darcy Kritha, Delgado’s lawyer, after his story was reported in the media, the USCIS contacted him to offer him another appointment later this month. Kriha handles cases involving the Americans With Disabilities Act and said the barriers Delgado faced should never have happened “The ADA itself does not require diagnosis by an MD,” Kriha told the Post. “Can a public agency decide that’s the criteria it wants to adopt? I suppose so, but only to the point that it does not become a barrier. For Lucio, it was definitely a barrier.”
While Delgado was able to come forward with his story and detail his experience, the question of how many immigrants face similar barriers remains. Kritha told The New York Times that she will be working on “figuring out how widespread” the issue is and what impact it has on undocumented immigrants. “It’s not hard to imagine that there have been undocumented people and their families who have not come forward because they’re afraid of being deported.”