Decades of Doubt : Law’s New ‘Registry’ Date Can End Uncertainty for Longtime Illegal Aliens

Maria Gomez used to feel nauseated with fear when her work at a legal service center required her to accompany clients to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service offices in downtown Los Angeles.

Her employers didn’t know it, but Gomez was in the United States illegally. Walking into INS offices to serve as a translator or help file documents was the last thing she wanted to do.

“I think that’s the worst experience I had in my life, needing to deal with that,” said Gomez (not her real name). “Oh my God, believe me, my stomach used to get in knots. It was terrible. But I needed the job. I was afraid to go out and look for another job.”

Gomez, 41, who eventually switched to less nerve-racking work at an insurance agency, has generally prospered since moving from Mexico to Los Angeles in 1969.

A slender woman with an air of physical and emotional strength, she raised a son from her brief first marriage and in 1974 bought a Norwalk home. She and her son lived there with her mother, a legal immigrant, until Gomez remarried three years ago and moved to Fontana. Life has been normal in most ways, she said, but lack of legal status was a cloud that never disappeared.

Now Gomez expects to win legal residence through one of the less well-known features of the new immigration law, the “registry” provision, which provides permanent residence to people who have lived in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1972.

According to INS estimates, up to 200,000 people may qualify under this portion of the law, which simply moves up the previous registry date of June 30, 1948.

The experiences of registry applicants resemble those of people eligible under the law’s main provisions, but their stories reflect many more years of uncertainty, frustration and sometimes anguish. Some have waged long battles with the INS. Most carry their secret quietly, seeking to merge into the society around them.

Many more--up to 3.9 million, according to INS projections--will qualify under other provisions of the law that provide temporary legal status to people who have lived in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1982, or who performed at least 90 days of agricultural work in the 12 months ending May 1, 1986. These people must later apply for adjustment to permanent status.

Those eligible for registry--so named because applicants “register” their presence here--face fewer conditions than applicants for the other legalization programs and receive permanent status much more quickly. Those who qualify will generally receive permanent residence certificates about three months after applying, according to INS officials.

Legal status “wouldn’t really change very much my way of living, but emotionally I think it will mean a lot,” Gomez said. One of the most important practical effects, she said, is that it will enable her to visit Mexico. Her husband, a legal immigrant, owns land there that she has never seen.

Gomez’s son, who asked to be identified only by the nickname Beto, is less emotional about getting legal residence, but sees its practical importance.

“I’ve never thought about being illegal or anything, because we’ve never had any problems,” said Beto, 18, an athletic UCLA sophomore who was brought to Los Angeles in 1968 when he was less than a year old. “Citizenship or registry will help me out finding a job, but I kind of (already) consider myself a citizen, a resident.”

Beto didn’t know that he and his mother had a problem until he was 12, when he qualified for a Little League all-star tournament and needed a copy of his birth certificate to prove that he was not too old to participate.

“I remember I had to keep asking her for the certificate, and she kept putting it off,” Beto said. “I finally had to tell her the deadline was coming up. She finally told me and showed it to me. I guess I felt alienated, different from other people. At first it kind of bugged me a little bit.”

It turned out that the Little League officials were only concerned about proof of age. The fact that he was born in Mexico was of no interest to them at all.

“It never bothered me after that,” he said.

Years of Frustration

For Alfredo Parra, registry should end years of frustrating inability to get legal status. Parra, 57, a Diamond Bar resident who works as an aircraft design engineer, said he was born in San Antonio, Tex., and was taken to Mexico by his parents when he was 1 year old, but he has no absolute proof of this. He has lived continuously in the United States since 1948--he registered with the Selective Service in El Paso on Sept. 18 of that year--so he barely missed qualifying for permanent residence under the old registry law.

Parra’s children are adult U.S. citizens, so in 1985 he tried applying for permanent residence through the sponsorship of a daughter.

His daughter received a brief written reply: “If your father was born in the United States as claimed, he is a citizen and this form . . . does not apply. He should pursue obtaining a delayed birth certificate from the State of Texas.”

Parra got such a certificate on March 12, 1986. “I thought that was it,” he recalled. “I felt very happy.”

Then he used the document to apply for a U.S. passport.

“The first thing they told me is that it wasn’t enough,” Parra said. “The federal government doesn’t recognize that as proof of citizenship. . . . I felt very terrible--very, very disappointed.”

‘There’s Another Way’

Last Nov. 5, Parra’s attorney, Carl Shusterman, received confirmation from a federal official that the delayed birth certificate would be insufficient to get Parra a passport.

“The next day was the day Reagan signed the immigration bill,” Shusterman said. “I said, ‘Aha! There’s another way.’ I had Mr. Parra in, and we decided to go for registry instead.”

Parra now has a mid-April INS interview scheduled. He expects to receive his permanent residence approval on that day.

“Time passes so quickly, and I’m getting older,” Parra said. “The time is coming for a lot of my benefits. And if I want to travel--I’d like to go to Europe and places like that--I cannot go. . . . I’m to the point I don’t care where I was born, as long as this thing can be fixed.

“I never had any fear, because I always felt I was an American citizen. The way I feel, what makes a citizen? I guess it’s someone who obeys the law, pays taxes and contributes to the country.”

‘Deeply Contented’

Guadalupe Ruelas, 56, said he feels “deeply contented” at the thought of winning legal residence after 23 years of work as a gardener at the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart convent in Los Feliz.

“Once you start counting, it’s a lot of years,” said Ruelas, who speaks some English but chose to be interviewed in Spanish. “I feel like I should get a statue for working such a long time at this place,” he added with a laugh.

One of five children, Ruelas grew up in the village of Tecolotlan in Guadalajara, Mexico, finishing sixth grade and then devoting his time to the family plot of corn, beans and vegetables. He married and had seven children, all born in the village. When he was 34, his brother who was then a gardener at Immaculate Heart, said he could get work there too. So Ruelas took a bus to Tijuana, waited there a month to get a 72-hour U.S. border-crossing card, and came to Los Angeles. He never went back, but for the next 16 years, he said, his wife came to visit him at least once a year, slipping across the border on foot every time. In 1980, she finally moved to Los Angeles, along with several of their children, he said.

Ruelas said he came “in order to progress, to be able to better myself, my situation, to be able to have the things I want to have, and to live in a place where I’m more comfortable.” He is happy in his work, he said.

“I’m a specialist in what I do,” he explained. “I like it. That’s why I’ve done it all these years.”

A Few Close Calls

Ruelas said he has never really worried about the INS, but that he has had a few close calls. “There was a raid on a bar at Pico and Mariposa,” he recalled. “They took all but two people. I was one of them.”

Asked to explain his good fortune, Ruelas replied: “I didn’t run. I didn’t make a big deal of it.”

Now, Ruelas said, he expects to receive permanent residence in late April. His wife, three children who still live with them and one more adult child will apply under the law’s main amnesty provision, he said.

“I think it will change my life,” he said. “I’ll have more confidence. I might be able to prosper more.”

Carol Schmidt (not her real name), a Mexican citizen who came to the United States with her parents when she was 6 years old, was aided in merging into American life by a Germanic surname.

“My father’s grandfather was German,” said Schmidt, a vivacious 23-year-old. “With my name, I don’t think anyone questioned whether I belonged here or not.”

Took Honors Courses

Schmidt learned English at a British preschool in Mexico City. She grew up in a Victorian home her parents rented near Alvarado and 3rd streets in Los Angeles, and rode the bus to attend high school in Van Nuys, where she took honors courses.

Illegal status didn’t affect her until she graduated from high school in 1982, she said.

“I really wanted to go to college,” she said. “I wanted to go because I like learning, I like school, I like being around people my own age.”

But she believed that without legal residence, college was out of the question. “I couldn’t go because I didn’t have a Social Security number,” she said.

Actually, under rules in effect at the time, Schmidt could have attended a state university by admitting her illegal status and paying non-resident tuition. And since July, 1985, illegal aliens have been able to attend California’s public universities as state residents if they meet all other requirements.

‘Something Evil’

But believing that she could not attend college--and feeling that “it was something evil, that I didn’t have a Social Security number”--Schmidt found an office job. She has worked her way up to a paralegal position in a Westwood law firm.

Schmidt’s parents and older brothers had gotten Social Security cards when she was still a little girl, back when it was easier to obtain them without proof of legal residence. Her own lack of such a number was the main thing about illegal status that bothered her, she said.

Without a Social Security number to open a checking account, she used money orders to make the monthly payments when she bought a car.

“It really bothered me,” she said. “I didn’t want to break laws. I wanted to vote, to be more American, I guess.”

In mid-January, Schmidt applied for registry and immediately received work authorization. With that, she got a Social Security number in two weeks.

“It was a big, huge relief,” she said. “I never had any real material indication that everything was going to be OK for me. That gave me some real security.”

Schmidt expects to get permanent residence status in early April. One of the most immediate effects will be to allow her to explore her Mexican roots.

“I’d like to at least go down to Mexico and see what that country is about, not through a 6-year-old’s eyes, but at my age,” she said. “I have one set of relatives in Mexico City and one set in Acapulco. I think I’d like to go down for Christmas.”

Schmidt also plans to go to college.

“I think I’ll really be able to do all the things I want to do,” she said. “It was always so far away. And then suddenly this.”

THREE ROUTES TO PERMANENT RESIDENCE Registry

Applicants must show that they:

Have resided in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1972.

Are of good moral character and are not ineligible for citizenship.

Timing:

Applications are now being accepted. Interviews are scheduled about three months after application, and permanent residence may be granted to qualified applicants at the end of the interview.

Confidentiality:

If the application is denied and the alien does not qualify for the main amnesty program, deportation proceedings may be initiated by the INS against the applicant.

Main Legalization Program

Applicants must show that they:

Have resided in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1982, and have been in continuous unlawful status since that date.

Have maintained “continuous physical presence” in the United States since Nov. 6, 1986, with the exception of INS-approved “brief, casual and innocent absences.”

Meet general requirements for admissibility as immigrants, with some exceptions.

Have not been convicted of any felony or three or more misdemeanors.

When applying for adjustment from temporary to permanent status, applicants must demonstrate a minimal understanding of English and the history and government of the United States or show that they are enrolled in a course of study.

Timing:

Applications for temporary residence will be accepted beginning May 5.

Applications for permanent residence may be made 18 months after gaining temporary status.

Confidentiality:

The INS may not use information contained in applications to deport unsuccessful applicants unless they have committed fraud in the application.

Farm Workers

Applicants must show that they:

Have worked in seasonal agriculture at least 90 days during the year ending May 1, 1986.

Meet general requirements for admissibility as immigrants, with some exceptions.

Timing:

Applications for temporary residence will be accepted beginning June 1.

Applicants fall into two categories:

Those who worked 90 days during the years ending May 1, 1984, 1985 and 1986, and stayed in the United States for six months during each year may receive permanent status one year after the end of the 18-month application period. A maximum of 350,000 workers may be legalized.

Those who do not meet this requirement must wait two years after the end of the 18-month application period to become permanent residents. There is no numerical limit.

Confidentiality:

The INS may not use information contained in applications to deport unsuccessful applicants unless they have committed fraud in the application.

Sources: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Title 8 U.S. Code 1259; INS statements.