Many in U.S. Turn to Canada : Immigration Law Chills Central Americans’ Hopes

Cesar and Silvia, a young Salvadoran couple, are on the move again.

The couple--who, like the vast majority of their countrymen in the United States have been denied political asylum here--have packed their meager belongings into two cardboard boxes and are steeling themselves for the journey to Canada and what Silvia ominously calls “an unknown destiny.” But it is preferable, Cesar said, to the danger that awaits him in El Salvador.

Cesar, a government social worker back home, was active in a conciliatory political party that became the target of right-wing death squads. He was twice arrested and tortured by national police who accused him of being a subversive, Cesar said. (Like others in the United States illegally who are quoted in this article, the couple asked that only their first names be used.)

“Thank God for Canada,” said Cesar, who said he is leaving the United States with a less than positive impression. “This government, well aware of the chaotic situation in our troubled (Central American) countries, and having the wherewithal to help, is the one that’s offered us the least help.”

While the new U.S. immigration law has touched off guarded hope among Mexicans and other illegal immigrants across the country, Central Americans feel left out and more beset than ever.

Cesar and Silvia are among the lucky ones.

Although U.S. immigration officials rejected Silvia’s application for political asylum after she was apprehended in 1984 for illegally crossing into the United States to join her husband, Canadian authorities recently granted the couple permission to immigrate there as political refugees.

The discrepancy is not unusual. While both countries claim a similar standard for granting political asylum--a well-founded fear of persecution--the approval rate for Salvadorans’ asylum applications is about 30% in Canada compared to about 2% in the United States. The difference in rates is still more pronounced for Guatemalans.

Unsuccessful in gaining political refugee status, Central Americans have melded into this country’s general population of Latino illegal aliens. And the Los Angeles area--with an estimated population of about 300,000 Salvadorans and 80,000 Guatemalans--has become the country’s undisputed Central American capital.

But since passage last fall of the U.S. immigration bill, a growing sense of doom has gripped Los Angeles’ Central American community as full implementation of the bill approaches. May 5 is the starting date for filing amnesty applications under that portion of the law that grants legal status to aliens who can prove they have lived continuously in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982. Enforcement of the law’s employer sanctions is to begin in June, when authorities are expected to begin imposing fines on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

Unlike their Mexican counterparts, most of the nation’s estimated 500,000 to 1 million Central Americans who fled their troubled nations entered the United States after 1982 or lack the documentation to prove they arrived earlier, making them ineligible for amnesty, according to organizations that serve Central Americans in California. U.S. immigration authorities dispute this, however, contending that a majority arrived before 1982.

“Our worry grows with each passing day,” said Jose, 52, a Salvadoran who said he was blacklisted and threatened over his union and church activities back home and who is now involved in organizing his compatriots in Los Angeles in an effort to seek solutions to their predicament. “This new law is going to affect thousands,” he said.

“You already see the anguish and near-desperation in people’s faces. They run around from one place to another seeking some way out of what they see is in store for them--deportation or the inability to find work and survive.”

Strict Rules at Border

The growing despair has been compounded by an announcement two weeks ago of strict new rules at the Canadian border aimed at controlling a growing wave of Central American refugees into that country, after enactment of the U.S. law in November. During a recent 2 1/2-month period, more than 9,000 refugees sought emergency refugee status in Canada.

The restrictions ended a program of automatic admission for foreigners claiming political refugee status. Immediately after the action, hundreds of refugees awaiting processing were temporarily stranded in upstate New York near the Canadian border. Volunteer groups provided food and shelter, and even set up a makeshift refugee camp at a church in Detroit.

For Central Americans, who had perceived Canada as a haven of last resort, it was as if another door had been slammed in their faces.

Applications for political asylum are still being accepted at Canadian consulates, although an onslaught of applications has resulted in a delay of several months in processing them, according to Los Angeles Vice Consul Joan Atkinson. She noted that by last week, a few Central American refugees who had been turned away at the border were already back in Los Angeles and applying at the consulate.

Drop in Asylum-Seekers

But news of the border restrictions has triggered a dramatic drop in the number of Central Americans seeking asylum through the consulate.

“I guess people are figuring that Canada is just closing off altogether,” Atkinson said.

In the previous months, the consulate had been overwhelmed by a 500% increase in the number of Central Americans seeking assistance in immigrating to Canada, she said. But the hundreds who flooded the immigration office each day diminished to a trickle last week, she added.

For those still planning on making the move, the decision is often a difficult one that may even entail breaking up the family.

Jose, the former blacklisted Salvadoran union activist, and his eldest daughter who arrived with him in the United States after 1982--the amnesty cutoff date--are in the process of filing political asylum applications with the Canadian consulate. His wife and their two younger children, meanwhile, who arrived in the United States in 1981, plan to remain and apply for amnesty here.

‘Forced by Circumstance’

“We’ve been forced by circumstance to separate for a second time,” said Jose, recalling the family’s first trying months apart in El Salvador, when he was forced to go into hiding after threats on his life. “It is very hard for us, but we’ve agreed there is no alternative.”

Other considerations include having to pull up roots and start over once again in a foreign land still further removed physically, as well as psychologically, from their homeland. And this time, without the comfort of Los Angeles’ large Spanish-speaking community or the climate reminiscent of home.

“A friend was cautioning me the other day to think twice about going; that it gets real cold up in Canada,” Jose said. “But I told him I prefer cold weather to the cold of death that awaits us in El Salvador.”

Juan, a 19-year-old who managed to earn a high school diploma from a San Fernando Valley high school two years ago while working nights as a house painter, is also grudgingly planning the move to Canada.

“I’d prefer to stay here because I know my way around and where to look for work,” he said. “The most important thing I’ve found here is freedom and peace. . . . Here, if you have the capacity, you can make it.”

A Few Returning Home

While some look to Canada as a solution, a few are reportedly taking their chances and going back home. The vast majority, however, are waiting to see what the new U.S. immigration law brings, holding on to the hope that somehow they will survive it.

But already there are increasing reports of employers demanding immigration documentation of workers, and in some instances even of premature firings by employers overreacting to the law’s threatened sanctions.

Antonio, 25, an accountant in his native El Salvador who for the last two years has worked at a North Hollywood warehouse, said his boss informed employees recently that unless they provided some proof of legal status, or at least some proof of their intention to apply for amnesty under the new law, they would be fired. Antonio said his boss ignored his attempts to explain that employers are not liable for workers hired before the law’s enactment in November.

Illegal aliens in Antonio’s position can expect no sympathy from officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, who maintain that such aliens have no right to be in the country to begin with.

“Just because an employer is not liable” for workers hired before November, “that doesn’t make the worker legal,” said INS spokesman Duke Austin, noting that if picked up by immigration authorities, the worker could face deportation.

“We would encourage employers, however, to give those hired before Nov. 6 who may have equity under the bill the opportunity to file for the benefit (of amnesty) and that they keep them on the rolls.”

Antonio’s anger at the possibility of losing his job, meanwhile, is directed not at his employer, who has otherwise treated him fairly, he said, but at a government he contends has been unfair in its overall treatment of Central Americans.

“The Reagan Administration doesn’t want to accept us as refugees because it would be admitting that the military aid it sends to El Salvador does not help, rather destroys and creates refugees,” Antonio said. “I didn’t come here because I wanted to. I had no economic need to come. I left my country because I had to.”

The Reagan Administration has categorized Salvadorans and Guatemalans as economic, not political refugees, despite heavy fighting and persistent government human-rights abuses. Even among Salvadorans who claim they suffered severe mistreatment, including torture, in their homeland, the approval rate for asylum applications is 4%, according to a government study released last fall. In contrast, the approval rate for Poles making such claims was 80%.

Assumed to Be Lying

“The INS assumes that anyone coming from Guatemala or El Salvador is lying,” said Lynn Alvarez, an attorney with El Rescate, a legal and social service center serving Central Americans. Political asylum petitions are judged by both the INS and State Department.

“The Canadians are more willing to take people at their word. If someone’s been tortured or has had political problems in his home country, Canadian officials will give them a chance to present their case and will understand that it’s very difficult for refugees fleeing their country to bring with them a whole slew of documentation to prove their case,” she said.

The Administration’s immigration stance has also aroused anger among church and other refugee advocacy groups who say they are mobilizing to do what they can to help the refugees.

Some say they are even prepared to defy the immigration law.

“We’re asking the church and sanctuary community to offer jobs to the refugees,” said Patrice Perillie, director of immigration for Catholic Social Services of San Francisco, which is regarded as a leader among church organizations serving Central Americans. “We see them not as illegal aliens but as political refugees.”

May Join Ranks of Homeless

The organization is also gearing up, she said, to open a shelter for refugees who they anticipate will join the ranks of the homeless as jobs are denied them.

The greatest hope, however, lies in proposed legislation, reintroduced in both houses of Congress this year by Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), to grant temporary asylum to Salvadorans and Nicaraguans as well as declare a two-year moratorium on deportations of the Central Americans.

The bills’ authors are pushing for a May vote, said a Moakley aide, Jim McGovern.

While confident of winning congressional approval, supporters are concerned about a possible presidential veto, McGovern added. He noted that the bill had been approved as part of the immigration reform measure last year, but was deleted when the Administration threatened to veto the whole bill unless it was removed.

Noting the addition of Nicaraguans to the proposal, McGovern said that the bill’s supporters are encouraged by lobbying efforts being conducted by Nicaraguans among conservative Republicans, McGovern said.

Lobbying for Bill

Meanwhile, refugee advocates in Los Angeles as well as refugees themselves are lobbying for the bill in a door-to-door informational and letter-writing campaign, and are planning community rallies. This is part of what advocates in both San Francisco and Los Angeles describe as growing activism among refugees.

“The community itself, which is suffering tremendous hardship under the new law, is becoming much more organized and vocal about the impact of the bill on their lives,” said Cynthia Anderson of Proyecto Pastoral, a church-based research and advocacy group on Central American issues.

The vast majority of Central Americans, however, seem to be taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“Most are overwhelmed with everything that’s happening so fast and are postponing decisions until May--the magical month--hoping that the law is a nightmare that will go away,” Alvarez said. She predicted that Central Americans will be driven further underground and made more vulnerable to exploitation because “no matter what INS does or doesn’t do, they aren’t going to go back.”

Some, like 30-year-old Jaime, are growing anxious over their limited choices and weary of being on the run. He recently gave notice at work, helped pack his family’s belongings and made airline reservations for Canada--only to cancel at the last minute upon hearing the news about the Canadian border restrictions.

“I’m still feeling bad about it,” said Jaime a few days after last weekend’s aborted trip, his voice a tired monotone.

And there is a lot to feel bad about: “There is war in our homeland and we cannot return. When we arrive here, we are chased out. Then, Canada, the only country that had offered us support, begins to limit entry. . . . Is there anywhere where Central Americans can be accepted and find peace?”

After a pause, Jaime inquired hesitantly: “By any chance, Miss, have you heard whether they’re offering political asylum in Australia?”