Blending In : Illegals: You’d Be Surprised

Anthony Flesch does not fit the stereotype of an illegal alien. He is middle-class, white, a South Africa native who came to the United States in 1977 on a valid student visa and now owns a small Long Beach advertising agency.

Nor does Benny Melamed, an Israeli who entered the United States on a one-month visitor’s visa in 1979. Melamed works at a Los Angeles car rental company as a computer programmer.

Or Stanley Wisnieski (not his real name), owner of a small bakery in Dorchester, a working-class suburb of Boston, who came to the United States from Poland in 1980 on a tourist visa and never returned.

Eligible for Amnesty

But on May 5, these three men will join at least 250,000 other unlikely illegals in being eligible to apply for amnesty under the new federal immigration law. Although the specific regulations covering amnesty have not yet been adopted, according to the law, those who were in this country without legal documentation before Jan. 1, 1982, will be eligible.

Since Congress legislated sweeping immigration reform late last year, most of the attention has focused on those who came in over the U.S. southern border or from East Asia, but there are many others. Joining the rush for amnesty, immigration lawyers say, will be wealthy British retirees from Florida, Iranian gas station owners from Los Angeles and Irish carpenters from New York.

“It’s not just going to be the Mexican farm worker who crossed the border at night,” said Warren Leiden, executive director of the 2,000-member American Immigration Lawyers Assn. in Washington. “There are going to be upper-middle-class people, pillars of the community applying.”

Thought They Were Legal

“There are more professionals than you can believe out of status--doctors, accountants, physicists,” said Ed Prud’homme, a Houston immigration attorney. “These are people the general public thought were legal all these years.”

Congress and the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimate that the total number of illegal aliens eligible for amnesty at 3.9 million. Immigration lawyers and government officials estimate that more than 75% of illegal aliens in this country come from Latin America, and most of the rest are from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

But the INS and the Bureau of the Census also estimate that the number eligible for amnesty from Europe, Canada, Israel and Iran total more than 250,000.

Father Jaime Soto, associate director of Catholic Charities of Orange County, was struck by the scope of those seeking legal status when the diocese printed amnesty instructions and information only in Spanish.

“All of a sudden we started getting a lot of phone calls from people asking if we had the information in English,” Soto said. The callers identified themselves as being from Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Poland and Romania. As a result, the information was translated into English and printed. So many of the English translations were distributed that a second batch had to printed.

“Legalization was not set up only for people from the Southern Hemisphere,” said a congressional staff member who worked on drafting the new law, but asked to remain anonymous. “A lot of time when you talk about legalization, Hispanics come to mind, because they’re the ones everyone thinks about.”

INS officials and immigration lawyers say that Caucasian illegals often go unnoticed in American society. Most are light-skinned, fluent in English, own property and work in white-collar jobs where employers are not likely to ask them for proof of U.S. citizenship. The overwhelming majority of these illegals walked, drove or flew into the United States legally on tourist, business or student visas--but never went home. The State Department refers to them as “over-stayers.”

Little Fear of Discovery

Typical of this group is the South African Flesch: Most of his nine years in this country have been spent with little fear of discovery by the INS.

However, Flesch, 33, said he had one “pretty scary moment” while vacationing in the Virgin Islands with an American girlfriend in the late 1970s. Returning from St. Croix, he was asked for documentation by an immigration official, but “we bluffed our way through it.” After that experience, he said, “I vowed I’d never leave the country again until my status was resolved.”

In Boston, where he was studying, Flesch said people “just assumed you were naturalized.” By the time he moved to California in 1982, he said, “I had very few fears. . . . I knew I wasn’t Hispanic-looking, so I didn’t have a problem.”

Yet, like any illegal immigrant, the prospect of being deported and losing everything he has built in the past decade was often in his mind, Flesch said.

‘Loss of My Friends’

“The thing that bothered me most was not the material loss,” he said, “but the loss of my friends.”

While Flesch opposed South Africa’s racial separation policies, he said that, initially, his decision to remain in the United States “wasn’t a political one.” Yet as he remained here, he came to see that he could not return to South Africa because of its government’s apartheid policies.

Still, Flesch, a graduate of the University of Cape Town who had fulfilled his military obligation in South Africa before coming to the United States, realized that his opposition to apartheid was not sufficient to allow him to remain here. “Political asylum was out,” he said, because “I hadn’t been active enough before I left South Africa.”

Iranians represent the largest nationality group among non-Latino illegal aliens in the United States. The INS estimates that roughly 58,000 Iranians are in this country illegally, though some experts believe that the number could be substantially higher.

Iranian observers and immigration specialists believe that the number of Iranian eligibles is at least 100,000, and several lawyers around the country predict that Iranians will be “coming out of the woodwork” after May 5. Iran Times, a national weekly newspaper published in Washington in English and Farsi, has also been carrying many lawyers’ ads for amnesty, much like the Latino press.

Iranian Inquiries

The Los Angeles law firm of Jason & Myers received more than 100 telephone inquiries about amnesty from Iranians in December alone, according to Hossain Haghigi. Bernard P. Wolfsdorf, a Los Angeles immigration attorney with a substantial number of Iranian clients, said he expects that “thousands” of the estimated 70,000 Iranians living in California will come forward for amnesty.

Amir Amini (not his real name) fled Iran with his wife and two young children in 1981, arriving in the United States on a tourist visa. He quickly converted the tourist visa to a student visa and got a Social Security card, but dropped out of college after only two or three months’ study.

For the next six years he lived in the San Fernando Valley and supported himself buying and selling clothing out of his car. He never ran into any problems with the INS, he said, but he did take certain precautions, once passing up a well-paying factory job offer because it was in downtown Los Angeles.

“Downtown is trouble,” he said, explaining that he feared a greater likelihood of running afoul of the authorities. He doesn’t pay taxes and, until the new law was signed, never told his two teen-age children that they too were in this country illegally.

“They’re too sensitive,” he said, “and they have to concentrate on their studies.”

‘I Would Pay Taxes’

With legal status, Amini, 48, said, “I could have a good business here” and “I would pay taxes to the government.”

Perhaps the most invisible of all illegal aliens are English-speaking Canadians. Because visas are not required of Canadians, there is no concrete way of determining their numbers. However, the INS and the Census Bureau put the figure of those eligible for amnesty at 25,000.

Several years ago, the Canadian government attempted to determine how many of its citizens were in this country, but according to Bill Lundy, an immigration specialist at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, “we couldn’t come up with any number that appeared to be realistic.” Lundy said he “had no doubt there are some out there. I’d be interested to know myself.”

According to Howard Deutsch, a New York immigration attorney, within a 50-mile radius of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., there are an estimated 250,000 Canadian immigrants from the Province of Quebec alone, and the U.S. total may go as high as 1.5 million. Like many of the other nationalities, no one can say how many of them are illegals.

There are smaller Canadian colonies in Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and Atlanta, Deutsch said, composed of investors or retired people taking advantage of favorable U.S. tax rates and the climate, often carrying phony Social Security cards, or none at all.

Many Canadian Inquiries

Leon Wildes, a New York immigration attorney, said he has received inquiries from Canadians “who have been in the United States for many, many years, sometimes 20 or 30 years. You would never know when they come into your office that they’re not Americans.”

If it had not been for the new law, Wildes said, “I don’t think they would have ever inquired. They would have died illegal. . . . Some of these people are so entrenched in the economy it’s going to be a shock to people in their firms that their bosses are illegals.”

Rabbi Donald Beach (not his real name), who heads a Southern California synagogue and is a Canadian citizen, entered this country legally more than 10 years ago to do graduate study and confesses that “I don’t know what my present status is right now.”

While Beach has never had any problems with the INS, he does take precautions. He receives housing and use of a car from his congregation, which is aware of his undocumented status, and is paid only a small cash stipend. He does not file with the Internal Revenue Service--”I have nothing to do with them”--and because he has no Social Security card he used an invented number when opening a checking account.

Beach’s status, he said, “is always in the back of your mind,” which is one reason he is looking into the possibility of applying for amnesty. “There is anxiety, there always is, when you pass the border or customs.”

Blend in Easily

Like the Canadians and other native English speakers, illegal Irish immigrants also have a relatively easy time blending in, especially if they settle in cities with Irish neighborhoods.

Although the Census Bureau says there are only 7,000 Irish in the United States eligible for amnesty, immigration lawyers say the figure is much higher.

“There are a substantial number of Irish, between 50,000 and 100,000, in America illegally, a majority on the East Coast, and a substantial number of them are eligible for legalization,” said Deutsch, the New York immigration lawyer. Most are carpenters, painters and plumbers.

In Boston, undocumented Irish blue-collar workers are “the equivalent of Mexican migrant workers,” regularly sending a portion of their wages to relatives at home or saving for an eventual return themselves, according to Adam Green, a Boston attorney.

Green also recently addressed a church in the Boston suburbs that was filled with Polish immigrants interested in the new law. After his speech, which was translated into Polish, Green was approached with questions about amnesty by a number of Poles, including the baker Wisnieski and the local parish priest. Green said that a number of the congregants from the rural area of Bialystok in Poland had come over to do farm work in New England and would be eligible for legalization under the provisions of the law that apply to seasonal agricultural workers.

Published in Hebrew

Deutsch, author of “Getting Into America,” a book aimed at non-Third World immigrants, said, “There is a substantial number of Israelis” who will be affected by the immigration law. In addition to English, his book is published in Farsi and Hebrew--but not Spanish--and has been a best seller in Canada, Ireland and South Africa, where he has lectured.

The INS estimates that there are at least 18,000 Israelis eligible for amnesty, and the weekly Hebrew-language newspaper Israel Shelanu has been carrying an increasing number of ads by immigration lawyers mentioning amnesty.

Melamed, the 28-year-old Israeli computer programmer, said he has had a Social Security card and paid taxes for the nine years he has been here.

Among his Israeli friends who are also illegal, the accepted belief is that they are safe from INS discovery in this country as long as they stay away from areas like San Diego and Niagara Falls, where border scrutiny is greatest. Melamed said the only time he was worried about his status was when an unscrupulous immigration lawyer threatened to inform on him.

Melamed said he has never had any difficulties with a prospective employer. “They never ask you about your status,” Melamed said. “They’re just interested to see how much you know” in your field.

It is not only the amnesty provision of the new act that affects white immigrants.

‘Bonus’ Visas’

Another section provides for 10,000 “bonus” residency visas, known as “green cards,” over the next two years for applicants from 36 countries “adversely affected” when the old national quota system was scrapped in 1965. Only seven of these are not predominantly white countries.

A congressional source familiar with the drafting of the bill, who asked not to be named, acknowledged that the provision creates “an interesting anomaly in the immigration code,” but insisted that there was never “a discussion of ethnicity” in writing the section.

However, a spokesman for Rep. Brian J. Donnelly said that the Boston Democrat had introduced the section to aid immigrants from Western Europe and especially from Ireland, where the congressman is now vacationing and discussing immigration policy with officials of the Irish government. Of the estimated 1 million applications mailed to a Washington post office box since Wednesday, about 80,000 are expected from Ireland and 64,000 from Canada.

The State Department says the applications, from people who need not qualify for residency under existing categories, will be approved in the order received, but proportional national ceilings have been established so that no single country will dominate the lottery.

At least one immigration expert said he is not concerned that white immigrants are benefiting from the “bonus” section of the bill, and sees a larger benefit to society in thousands of white illegals applying for amnesty.

“In the first half of the 20th Century, the debate over immigration policy was couched in terms of national origin, when what it was really about was race,” said Adam Green, who heads the committee on foreign students of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

“By the same token, much of the recent debate about immigration has really been about skin color, although you won’t find it in the Congressional Record,” Green said.

“There’s a reason why a racist, derogatory term exists for illegal Mexican immigrants--’wetbacks’--but illegal aliens from Europe are not called ‘whitebacks’ or some equivalent term,” he said. “If it takes large numbers of white illegals coming forward for amnesty to educate the American people that immigration is really about economics and people’s aspirations for a better way of life, that’s fine with me.”