Families Hold Out Hope for Amnesty : New Immigration Law Could Ease the Lives They’ve Established in U.S.

Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday celebrating that country’s defeat of an invading French army in 1862, this year marks something else as well: The first day of amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, who may apply during the next year to become legal residents of the United States.

Tens of thousands of Orange County’s estimated 200,000 illegal aliens are expected to avail themselves of the new immigration law, which grants amnesty to people in two broad categories: illegal aliens who have resided continuously in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982, and undocumented farm laborers who worked at least 90 days in the fields between May 1, 1985 and May 1, 1986.

Three Orange County families recently shared their hopes and fears about the amnesty program.

When members of Congress voted last fall to grant amnesty to thousands of illegal aliens, they must have had people like Jesus Alday Reyes in mind.

Alday has lived in Santa Ana for the last seven years. He is ambitious, deeply religious and law-abiding, and together with his wife pulls in close to $40,000 a year.

“I am already legal,” Alday said in Spanish, “in every way except that I don’t have a green card. Now I will get that too.”

Alday, 26, expects to file his application for legal-resident status soon after the program begins on Tuesday.

He must file no later than June 3, because he was picked up by immigration authorities two years ago and was in deportation proceedings when the new law was passed.

An immigration judge suspended the proceedings, but the case will be reopened if Alday fails to apply or if his application is rejected.

“I have no worries about it,” the stocky Mexican said. “Some people are worried, because even though they’ve lived here for 15 years, they’re not going to qualify. They haven’t lived a clean life. I’ve always worked and paid my taxes. I got my driver’s license four months after I arrived here. I like to be straight with the government.”

Alday lives in a tidy two-bedroom apartment across from Rancho Santiago College with his wife, Dolores, and their children, Vanessa, 2, and Sarai, 5 months.

The children are American citizens, and Dolores, who was born in Ensenada and raised in Tijuana, is a legal U. S. resident.

Rural Village

Alday came to the United States from the rural village of Abasolo, in the Mexican state of Durango, when he was 16. His father, Estanislao Alday, was already here, and he helped his son get work at a nursery.

The younger Alday soon left Orange County to help run a 75-acre almond farm in Northern California, but he returned to Santa Ana a year later and got a job working for a Nissan dealership in Newport Beach. Today, he works for Nissan in Santa Ana, detailing new cars for $11 an hour.

His wife works as a janitor in an Anaheim factory.

“I’m very content here,” said Alday, who has never returned to Mexico. “I was born very poor, but here I have a good job, a good salary, everything. I don’t want to leave.”

If he gets his green card, Alday says he will apply for citizenship “at the first opportunity. Mexico never gave me anything. . . . The president of Mexico says, ‘We’re here with our hands open to help you now.’ That’s a lie--he’s got his hands open to take away what the people bring back with them.

“ Para mi, el presidente es Reagan, y no hay otro “--there is no other, Alday said. “This is my country now.”

For Reynaldo and Raquel (their last name is being withheld), becoming legal residents may be tougher.

Reynaldo, 42, was arrested twice several years ago on suspicion of drunk driving, and he has never appeared in court to clear the charges. He used a different name back then, but if he puts it on his application to prove that he has worked since he arrived, the authorities might discover his previous arrests and disqualify him.

“I think we’ll qualify, though,” said Reynaldo, sitting on the front porch of his Santa Ana home after a day in Irvine Co. fields, still dressed in jeans and work boots. He has worked for the company, picking avocados, strawberries and citrus, since shortly after he arrived in the United States in 1977. “With the help of the company, and their lawyers, we’ll qualify.”

Other Family Members

Others in the family may not. His father, 62-year-old Ignacio, who lives with the couple, their seven children (plus two in-laws) and two grandchildren, went back to Mexico once for four months to bury Ignacio’s father and settle the family’s affairs, Reynaldo said. The law permits “innocent departures” from the country, but not for longer than 45 days at a time.

Santiago, 22, an articulate young man who lives with the couple’s oldest daughter, Maria, also may have problems. He entered the United States in March, 1982--two months after the Jan. 1 deadline set by Congress.

“I don’t want to go back to Mexico, but I may have to leave the country if I can’t find work,” said Santiago, who has worked for the last three years as a cook in a popular Irvine restaurant. “Maybe we’ll go to Canada. . . . If they see that I’ve worked, and I’m paying off my debts (incurred when Maria gave birth to their son, Daniel, two years ago), won’t they find a way for me to qualify?”

Raquel, 40, has not worked since she came to the United States with six of the couple’s children in 1979. She has had to stay home to care for Maria Isabel, 13, who was born with cerebral palsy and began to improve only after two operations by American doctors and regular therapy at a special school in Santa Ana for the orthopedically handicapped.

Health Benefits

“It’s especially important for her that we qualify,” said Raquel, concerned that the health benefits her daughter has received might somehow diminish the family’s chances of obtaining amnesty. “She’s the principal reason we came. In Mexico they don’t have the facilities to take care of her, and they charge a lot. . . . She sees a doctor every six months here (through a school program) and gets therapy three times a week.”

Reynaldo pondered a moment when asked if he thought the new law is just. “ Bueno , it’s going to help a lot of people,” he said. “But what’s going to happen to all those who don’t qualify for some reason or another--because they worked in a factory rather than on a farm or something like that? I think it’s discriminatory.”

As for becoming U. S. citizens, Reynaldo said it is too early to even think about it. “Right now, what interests us is getting the (green) card. If we’re accepted, we’ll see about that later.”

On an egg ranch in the hills of East Irvine, Asuncion Sanchez stood over a huge kettle and stirred fresh carnitas --pork fried in gallons of its own lard--with a piece of wood.

A friend had come and slaughtered one of Sanchez’s pigs the day before, and now Sanchez’s family and some neighbors were huddled around the open fire on a cool winter evening, much as they might have been back in Guanajuato, the central Mexican state he left nine years ago.

“May 10, 1978, I arrived in the United States,” said Sanchez, 38, who sneaked across the border on foot with the aid of a coyote . “One doesn’t forgot a day like that--suffering in the hills, you want to cry for the pain in your legs and you’re scared to death of bandits and la migra .”

File Applications

But the immigration authorities never did catch Sanchez, and soon he, his common-law wife, Maria Angiano, and their oldest son, 9-year-old Cornelio, will file applications for legal-resident status.

“ Si, como no ?”--yes, why not? said Sanchez. “We have enough time in the country, and the opportunity is there.”

Neither Sanchez nor Angiano, who works at a nearby nursery, expect their lives to change very much if they obtain amnesty. But Sanchez, who didn’t learn to read until he served in the Mexican army for a year, wants his children to stay in the Irvine school system. Three of their four children--Asuncion, 7, Virginia, 5, and Guadalupe, born 3 months ago at UCI Medical Center--are American citizens.

“They have everything ahead of them,” Sanchez said. “My parents were very old-fashioned, they didn’t think school was important so they didn’t send me. I want my kids to learn something--I don’t want them to be gardeners.”

Sanchez said he might try to find a job as a bricklayer if he obtains amnesty; he learned masonry at the age of 14 in Mexico City. But for the most part, he is content with life on the egg ranch, where he and his family occupy two rusty old trailers and he oversees 50,000 hard-working hens.

“I like the rural life,” Sanchez said. “I grew up this way--with animals and open fields.”

Besides, he earns $175 weekly and pays no rent, gas or electricity, he said. “In Santa Ana, I’d have to rent an apartment or a house--what would that cost, $500, $550? I’d have to earn a lot more to make up for that.”

But Sanchez would like to be able to go back to Mexico to visit his parents and brothers--something he has not risked since coming here. In fact, he has not had a day’s vacation since he began working on the egg ranch.

“We’re camels” he said, grinning. “The eggs have to be picked up every day. And where would I go--Riverside, Santa Ana? I can’t go to San Diego because of the San Clemente (Border Patrol) station.

One thing Sanchez is sure of: “Whatever happens, we’re not going to stop working.”