When my grandmother got her naturalization, she had to hand over her original birth certificate from Italy over to the office in Newark, New Jersey. They kept the birth certificate. Is this a common practice? This was in 1974. I'll be calling them tomorrow when they open but was wondering if anyone ...

My appointment is set for January 2013 in Philadelphia!!! That's insane. Are there really no other options for me to make this go through faster? I'm a resident of PA.

I've also been forced to pay $25 to even make the appointment to IPS. The guy at IPS wasn't really nice at all either.

He also had ...