"Citizenship can be revoked upon the discovery of any procedural irregularity, even if you now fulfill the conditions for naturalization anyway," said Darryl Li, a legal researcher from Yale who is studying the veterans' cases.
He said the program is intended to incorporate the insight of experts who read "every single one of the relevant research reports" as they review the veterans' cases, doing "everything possible on their behalf". .
Neiria et al. reported a mean GSI level of 0.45 in the veterans' cases in contrast with 0.33 in the controls [ 30].
"The real tragedy in these veterans' case is that, where PTSD is a factor, it is highly treatable," said Lawrence W. Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.
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The government's strategy in state cases is to say that only the federal court system established for veterans' cases can review the claims — but the government has also told the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims that those decisions "are entirely discretionary" under the veterans affairs secretary and so "the court has no jurisdiction" over appointment protests.
Justice Marcia P. Hirsch of State Supreme Court, who will lead the Queens court, and who had three veterans' cases scheduled the first day, said that what set apart this court and others like it was the assigning of veterans to mentor the defendants.
And CNN recently reported that the Veterans Affairs Department has almost 630,000 benefit claims that have been pending for more than 125 days, because of an outdated paper-based process and the complexities of returning veterans' cases.
In November 2008, Mr. Joseph Collorafi, division chief of the NY VA Regional Office, was suspended when an investigation revealed misconduct and mishandling of veterans' cases.
"Everyone who goes [to war] comes back a different person," says Patrick F. Dugan, a Philadelphia municipal court judge who handles veterans cases.
