Approximately 47,000 visa applicants will be given green cards before the FBI completes their background check, the federal government said on Monday. The perspective of tens of thousands of immigrants being given permanent residence without FBI’s green light raised a series of remarks on how this could compromise the national security. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Office officials gave assurances however that they wouldn’t have forwarded the proposal in the first place if the national security was to be compromised.

The government’s plan aims at reducing the number of green card applications, currently 320,000, by prioritizing the cases that have been pending for more than six months, despite the fact that the FBI’s background check has not been completed. The Bush administration has often been questioned about the enormous amount of time people need to wait before being given permanent residence, all because the FBI delays in completing its investigation.

According to Chris Bentley, spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, the 47,000 applicants have already passed the fingerprint check, and it is not normal for the them to wait up to two years for the investigations to end. “This maintains national security,” Bentley said. “Only after we received assurances that this would not compromise national security or the integrity of the immigration system did we go forward. It doesn’t compromise the system, but at the same time it allows us to get benefits to people who deserve them in a much quicker time frame.”

The people who will be given green cards have no criminal records, but from various reasons appear in the FBI’s database, often after being mentioned in criminal investigations, but with no involvement in any crime. This is why the FBI can’t go faster when checking somebody’s background, but at the same time, immigration advocates say there is no reason for people to wait for several years before their case is solved.