Dark Cloud in the Silver Lining : Amnesty Lawyers--Tide May Overwhelm Them

Atlanta attorney Dale Schwartz, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., cast a satisfied glance across the pin-striped and dark-suited crowd gathered a couple of months back in the rococo splendor of a ballroom at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.

“It’s amazing how many people want to be immigration lawyers all of a sudden,” he told the 200 or more attorneys meeting for intensive study of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the historic legislation that grants amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and imposes sanctions on employers who continue to hire illegal workers.

Schwartz, whose organization’s membership has leaped from 2,000 to 2,400 since the immigration law was enacted in November, reminded the attorneys that even Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a chief sponsor of the legislation, has called the new law “an immigration lawyer’s dream.”

All along the border from Brownsville to San Diego and in the big cities like Los Angeles to which illegal aliens have migrated in a decades-old search for work and a better life in America, the legalization program has created unprecedented amounts of new business for lawyers who represent both would-be citizens and employers.

The silver lining, however, is accompanied by a cloud that has grown darker and more foreboding with the approach Tuesday of the start of the yearlong application period for the amnesty program.

So dramatic are the changes exacted by immigration reform and so huge are the numbers of people affected that officials of Bar associations, both nationally and in California, are fearful that the legal profession will be overwhelmed by the demand for its services and prove incapable of responding competently to the need.

Especially for the poor--a large number, if not the majority, of the aliens expected to apply for temporary legal residency--legal assistance may simply be unavailable, Bar leaders and immigrants’ rights advocates say.

“People are going to have a hard time availing themselves of the benefits of legalization without representation and little chance of obtaining adequate representation--particularly if they cannot afford to hire lawyers,” said Arthur Helton, a New York attorney who directs the political asylum project of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

Officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service insist that the lawyer gap does not exist. The amnesty program has been designed so that most aliens can apply on their own or with help from the nonprofit agencies the immigration service has selected as “qualified designated entities,” Duke Austin, a spokesman for the immigration service, said last week.

Those predicting a crunch blame, however, the immigration service for making the amnesty program so complex that they say--contrary to the expectations of Congress and the assurances of the agency--that many aliens will need a lawyer’s advice to win legal residence.

Financial Barrier

“We always encourage people to get advice,” said Father Richard Matty, director of the Catholic Church’s migrant and refugee services in El Paso. “Someone just filling out an application or a notary filling out an application to me is not a good idea.”

The cost of legal help is proving to be a barrier to getting assistance, however. “El Paso is a depressed area,” Matty said. “For a lot of lower income people, even the lowest-price lawyer can be out of their price range.”

Historically, moreover, the immigration Bar has been small, with only a handful of lawyers in each major city making their living in highly specialized combat with the immigration service bureaucracy. Although some attorneys have jumped into the game with the advent of the new law, no more than 10,000 of the nation’s 700,000 lawyers will be prepared to represent alien clients seeking amnesty, according to New York attorney Robert Juceam, chairman of the immigration law committee of the American Bar Assn.’s litigation section.

Even if only 10% of the 1 million to 6 million aliens who may apply for amnesty in the next 12 months seek counsel, the inescapable conclusion is that the legal profession will fall short of meeting the demand, warned Juceam, who also is the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.’s general counsel.

“You do the division and you tell me how many of these people are going to get to these lawyers,” he said.

Local Troubles

In city after city, meantime, local programs designed to provide free or reduced-cost legal aid to aliens unable to afford lawyers are either not funded, still in the planning stage or lacking the volunteer lawyers they need.

Problems are expected in the small towns of the Southwest, where there may be few if any immigration lawyers, said Los Angeles attorney Richard Keatinge, chairman of the American Bar Assn.’s coordinating committee on immigration. Problems will be just as intense in Miami: an estimated 500,000 to 1 million aliens live in the city, and the Dade County Bar Assn.’s goal is to provide legalization assistance to just 200 families, according to Sharon Langer, director of legal aid.

Los Angeles is not immune. “We still have a huge shortfall in the area of pro bono representation in the legalization process,” said John Joannes, chairman of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. committee that oversees the Bar’s immigration legal assistance project.

Harold Ezell, Western regional commissioner of the federal immigration service, insisted that even if they need to pay for help, aliens see the prospect of eventual U.S. citizenship as so valuable that they will scrape up the money to get it.

“I just don’t believe there’s going to be a great number of people who will be turned away because they can’t make the filing fee or can’t find someone to help them make application,” Ezell said. “I believe there is such a determination in the hearts of these people to take advantage of this opportunity. How do you put a price on becoming a citizen of the United States?”

Charles Wheeler, director of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles, is dubious. Lawyers throughout the country report fees for handling amnesty applications ranging from $500 to $5,000, although the immigration service has established a charge of $185 per alien--up to a maximum of $420 per family--for processing applications.

“You’re talking about an alien population below the poverty level,” Wheeler said. “They don’t have the money, and I don’t know where they’re going to get it.”

There is no doubt, though, that the long-awaited enactment of immigration reform has been a boon for the Bar. Although attention has focused on the plight of aliens, the most lucrative legal activity has been performed on behalf of employers.

American business for the first time faces sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, and the new law requires employers to verify that every worker hired after Nov. 6 is in the United States legally. Business has sought legal advice about every aspect of the changes, and corporate law firms have rushed out newsletters, conducted seminars and called in clients who may face special legal problems.

Compliance with the new law “is a problem that has to be met by employers,” said Ronald Bonaparte, chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. “And they’re going to turn to their counsel.”

3-Week Backlog

Jan Bejar, a Mexico City native who has practiced immigration law in San Diego since 1983, has had a three-week backlog in his appointment book at times since amnesty was voted into law.

When prospective clients visit the downtown office he shares with two other attorneys, many ask if they really need a lawyer to apply for amnesty or if they will get adequate assistance from the Catholic Church or some other nonprofit agency.

“I say the choice is entirely yours,” the attorney said. He encourages them to use his services, however, if they can afford his $750 fee. “All I’m saying is, if you have a sickness, do you go to the doctor or do you go to a pharmacist? If you feel better going to a doctor and can afford it, go to the doctor.”

With no more than 40 experienced attorneys working full time on immigration cases in San Diego, Bejar pays careful attention to new competition and misconduct by his cohorts. Like lawyers in other border cities, he has seen both with the advent of amnesty.

“There are people that are running mills. They see this as a big opportunity--that they’re really going to rake in the bucks,” he said.

Meanwhile, at Immigration Court, where any lawyer--and non-lawyers authorized by the immigration service--can represent clients, there are attorneys Bejar has never seen before. “You see a lot of new faces who go in there and make absolute fools of themselves, because they don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

Watching for Abuse

Fearful that some lawyers--as well as immigration consultants, notary publics and other unlicensed advisers--will see the amnesty program as an opportunity for exploitation of aliens, government agencies and prosecutors in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties have formed task forces to combat abuse. Other regions of the country will rely on existing watchdog agencies to police the amnesty applications.

Affording protection to the aliens won’t be easy anywhere, however.

“You’re dealing with a people who are not used to coming to the government and saying, ‘I’ve been defrauded’ or ‘I think this is misleading and deceptive,’ because they’ve been taught to go running from the government,” said Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Katharine MacKenzie, a coordinator for City Atty. James K. Hahn’s immigration and amnesty task force.

Without pressure from prosecutors, there is little to stop unscrupulous lawyers from giving bad representation. “What’s going to happen if they screw up or don’t do anything? The people are going to get deported,” said San Diego Deputy City Atty. Anita Noone, a member of the San Diego County task force. “That’s not much of an incentive to walk the straight and narrow.”

Abuses have already surfaced. Noone’s office filed a civil suit April 17 against San Diego attorney Luis Planas. The suit alleges that Planas engaged in misleading business practices by advertising in Spanish that he offered “immediate legal protection” to aliens and that aliens had to apply for amnesty “now or never,” when in fact the application program lasts one year.

‘Green Cards’

Planas also allegedly gave clients laminated “green cards” that were green but conveyed none of the privileges associated with the residence documents issued by the immigration service.

Without admitting any wrongdoing, Planas agreed to change his advertisements. Meanwhile, he said he plans this week to add two offices--adjacent to immigration service amnesty centers--to the four he already has in operation in San Diego County.

“Our clientele is showing a substantial increase,” he said.

In El Paso, the Catholic diocese last month publicly criticized some local lawyers for charging excessive fees. The church also has warned aliens about the solicitations of a Mexican lawyer in neighboring Juarez whose ads on Mexican radio stations for a time invited clients in the United States to visit his office across the border.

Because immigration service regulations prohibit applicants from leaving the country without permission, aliens who went to see the lawyer risked disqualification under the amnesty program, said Matty, the diocese’s director of migrant and refugee services.

“Now, 90% of his information (about the law) is correct,” Matty said. “When he began, maybe 10% of his information was correct.”

Advisory Role

Bar groups have all but abandoned the notion that they might mobilize enough volunteer lawyers to represent the bulk of aliens unable to afford a private attorney. Instead, local and state Bar associations, American Immigration Lawyers Assn. chapters and other public service groups in most communities hope to act as advisers to the nonprofit agencies that will process applications and to bring appeals on behalf of rejected applicants.

In Los Angeles, where Bar leaders estimate that as many as 150,000 aliens will need free legal help, the county Bar has conducted training sessions in the new law for hundreds of private lawyers. Its legal assistance project, one of the immigration service’s qualified designated entities, will assist aliens with filling out amnesty applications at two offices, one in the federal building downtown and another slated to open in mid-May in Huntington Park. Applicants who require legal representation will be directed to the Bar’s lawyer referral service.

Bar leaders say, however, that many attorneys have been reluctant to familiarize themselves with the peculiarities of immigration law--a practice distinguished by unique procedures and an unsophisticated, non-English speaking clientele. The bottom line: Far fewer attorneys have volunteered than will be needed, said Joannes, chairman of the Los Angeles project.

“Lawyers simply cannot take care of the whole problem,” he said.

‘Very Serious Problem’

Some of the shortfall in legal assistance could have been alleviated if the Legal Services Corp., the quasi-public agency that channels federal money to state and local legal aid programs, had sought a way around congressional restrictions on using its funds to assist aliens, some Bar officials contend.

“Part of this implementation should be a relaxation of that requirement,” said Bill Whitehurst, president of the State Bar of Texas. “We have a very serious problem right now in the Legal Services Corp. not providing their function as the guardian of legal services to the poor.”

President John Bailey said the corporation’s board, dominated by appointees of the Reagan Administration, which has sought to eliminate funding for the organization altogether, would have liked to let the agencies it funds play a bigger role in the amnesty program. Language in the corporation’s congressional appropriation, however, strictly forbids spending federal legal aid funds on most groups of aliens, he said.

“I recognize this effort is in the nature of a small national emergency, and we’d like very much to be helpful,” Bailey said. “The way we can be helpful primarily is to remind the private Bar that the responsibility is almost entirely theirs.”