Illegal Aliens View Immigration Bill With Hope and Suspicion

For Patricia and Gilberto Leyva, perhaps the most taxing part of living a clandestine existence, a life in the shadows, is the difficulty of explaining it to their 8-year-old son, Marco.

Like his parents, Marco was born in Mexico and is therefore an “illegal alien”--although he has lived in San Diego since he was 10 months old, attends public school here, speaks English and dreams of joining the U.S. Navy someday. His 4-year-old sister, born in the United States, is the only family member who is a U.S. citizen.

“What do I say to my son when he asks why we can’t go to Disneyland?” asks Gilberto Leyva in his native Spanish. Leyva is an earnest man who has made his family a good home in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in Southeast San Diego. “How can I explain that it’s too much of a risk to pass the (Border Patrol) checkpoint?”

“The child,” adds Patricia Leyva, “he asks me sometimes why other boys in school tell him he’s Mexican. ‘I’m American,’ he says. How can we tell him the truth?”

For the Leyva family, which insisted that a pseudonym be used for this story, as for untold thousands of other families of illegal aliens throughout the United States, the immigration reform bill passed by Congress last month opens up the prospect of escaping from the shadows, of shedding the constant fear of family-wrecking arrests by immigration authorities. A major section of the bill would provide a so-called amnesty, or legal status, for some illegal aliens who, like the Leyvas, have resided continuously in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982. Special, more liberal, legalization provisions apply to agricultural workers.

“For my family, amnesty would be a wonderful thing,” Gilberto Leyva said.

Added Patricia Leyva: “It would give us our liberty. We wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

President Reagan is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.

However, while the prospective law has undoubtedly elevated hopes, it has also created considerable confusion, particularly in border areas like San Diego and other communities, such as Los Angeles, with large populations of illegal aliens. Despite the strong interest in the law, no one really knows yet exactly how the legalization program and other provisions will be implemented. Even social service agencies that will eventually be helping to process candidates for legalization are largely in the dark.

“People are starving for information,” said Yolanda Martinez, a community services specialist with the Chicano Federation in San Diego. “They want to know, ‘What do we do? Do we turn ourselves in? Do we do anything different?’ . . . All last week, it seemed like the phone was hooked to my ear. I’m telling people that we’re in a learning situation ourselves.”

Added Andres Bustamante, a research associate with the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles: “There’s mass confusion out there.”

And beyond the confusion, there is also quite a lot of suspicion and mistrust. While the prospect of legalization is a tantalizing one, many fear that another central component of the law--sanctions against employers that hire illegal aliens--will heighten discrimination against Latinos and other foreign-looking individuals. Even though the law has yet to be enacted, there have already been some reports of employers firing undocumented workers in an effort to avoid sanctions, according to Michael Myers, who heads the immigration and refugee program for the National Council of Churches in Washington.

Also there is considerable concern about the posture of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which will have the final call on amnesty cases.

“I think that Immigration (the INS) will try to use every reason to exclude people,” Bustamante said.

Charles Kamasaki, director of policy analysis for the National Council of La Raza, a Latino rights group, said, “One of the fears that we have is that some of the loose cannons at the INS will take this bill as a mandate to declare an open season on people, not just the undocumented, but on Hispanic citizens as well.”

INS authorities have thus far declined to offer details on the implementation of the new bill, saying such comments would be premature until the President signs it into law. But INS officials have pledged that the amnesty program will not be used as a trap to entice people to turn themselves in.

“It’s not in any way a sting operation for enforcement,” said INS western regional Commissioner Harold Ezell. “If they (illegal aliens) have a legitimate call on legalization, then they should get it. We’re not out to get them.”

But years of mistrust between the INS and the illegal alien community have produced a profound wariness.

“I think that many people will be very reluctant to come forward to apply for amnesty until there’s some assurance that it’s a fair process, and they’re not going to be picked up and sent across the border,” said Marco Antonio Rodriguez, executive director of Centro de Asuntos Migratorios, a nonprofit immigration consultant service based in Chula Vista. “There is already a high level of mistrust . . . especially since in recent times the INS has taken a very harsh approach.”

After the bill is signed, the U.S. Department of Justice, parent body of the INS, has six months to disclose plans for implementing legalization and other aspects of the law. After the planning period, illegal aliens will have one year in which to apply for legal status.

The planning period is considered crucial for the legalization program, which will create a whole new arena in the already complex world of immigration law. From a bureaucratic standpoint, the law will require the creation of new regulations, forms, a specially trained staff and an appeal process, among other things. Some early legal challenges are likely, possibly further delaying implementation of the law, according to experts.

“The new law is only a skeleton of a skeleton,” said Theodore P. Jakaboski, an attorney and former federal immigration judge in El Paso, Tex. “The regulations are going to be all-important on this.”

The bill assigns a key role to independent social service agencies, which will be doing much of the initial processing of illegal aliens who are applying for amnesty. It remains unclear how such agencies will be certified, or how they will be reimbursed by the government. In addition, immigrants’ rights groups plan to press the government to ensure that sufficient independent counseling is available and that word gets out.

“We want to maximize participation in the (illegal alien) community,” noted Kamasaki of the National Council of La Raza.

Already a number of church-affiliated groups nationwide are gearing up for the expected crush.

In San Diego and Los Angeles, Roman Catholic officials have announced plans to establish neighborhood counseling centers to provide screening, education and other services to families seeking legalization. Until more details of the law become known, however, the agencies have spent most of their time providing some basic advice: Don’t pay any money to any unqualified immigration “consultants,” who many fear are going to make a killing in the new-found amnesty “business.” And don’t turn yourself in.

“We’ve had some people call who were ready to go to the INS,” said the Rev. Doug Regin, executive director of Catholic Community Services for the San Diego diocese. “We told them to hold tight for now, not to do anything.”

Although there are many unanswered questions about the amnesty program, among the most perplexing is the following:

How will the government interpret the the term “continuous residence” in the United States.

Illegal aliens not working in the agricultural sector must demonstrate such continuous residence to qualify for legalization, but the bill provides no definition. The bill does speak of an exception for “brief, casual and innocent absences,” which would presumably include such things as visits home to see sick relatives. But it is still unknown how broadly the exception will be applied.

The interpretation will be crucial. In areas such as San Diego County, many undocumented families routinely return to Mexico to visit family members.

“People go home for the holidays for three weeks or more,” noted Marco Antonio Rodriguez of Centro de Asuntos Migratorios in Chula Vista. “Will these trips qualify as ‘casual absences?’ We don’t know.”

Moreover, each day thousands of illegal aliens are picked up by the Border Patrol and quickly returned to Mexico under what is commonly referred to as a “voluntary return” provision of the law. Will aliens who have agreed to such voluntary returns since 1982 be disqualified for legalization because their continuous residence was interrupted? Again, there is no answer yet.

As a precaution, many agencies appear to be advising aliens not to sign the voluntary return forms if arrested by immigration authorities. Instead, they can exercise their legal right to request a deportation hearing--an alternative that means that aliens will likely spend considerable time in federal custody awaiting hearings.

Another key question involves the documentation that will be required to demonstrate continuous residence in the United States. In the past, lawmakers have spoken of material such as rent receipts, utility payment stubs, income tax returns and affidavits from employers. Until the documentation is specified, it is difficult for illegal aliens to prepare their paper work.

Some other important questions raised by immigration experts include:

- How will the government interpret the scores of characteristics that make an alien “excludable” under immigration law? Among the most troublesome for a largely poor population, experts say, are requirements that applicants for citizenship demonstrate that they won’t become a public “charge” in the United States. The law also specifically disqualifies any illegal alien who has been convicted of a felony or three or more misdemeanor offenses in the United States.

- How will the government treat illegal aliens who are found to have been using fraudulent documents? Use of fake documents, particularly forged Social Security cards, is widespread within the illegal alien community. If discovered during the amnesty application process, will some illegal aliens be disqualified because of their use of such material?

- How strictly will the government insist on attainment of so-called “basic citizenship skills”? Before being granted permanent U.S. residence status, the bill requires that amnesty candidates show a “minimal” understanding of English and a “knowledge and understanding” of the history and government of the United States. They may also be studying to achieve such skills.

For the Leyva family in San Diego, the array of legal impediments is intimidating, but they plan to research the amnesty program thoroughly before deciding what action to take. Eventually they may hire an attorney.

The Leyvas say they have sufficient documentation, including tax returns, to demonstrate their almost-continuous residence in the United States since 1979, when Patricia Leyva and her 8-month old son arrived from Mexico City, crossing the border clandestinely at Tijuana. Gilberto, a salesman in San Diego now, had come several months earlier.

“I arrived with $50 and my name,” says Gilberto with a smile, sitting in the family’s comfortably furnished apartment, where an American flag is prominent. “We had no one here (in the United States) then. Now, we have an entire family . . . I want my children to go to college, to be educated in the United States.”

Patricia Leyva added, “To be legal would be a dream come true for us. Now, I’m afraid to go out in the streets, afraid immigration may arrest me. I’m afraid for my husband, my children. We love the United States very much, but we must live with this constant fear. It’s very difficult to live this way.”