Oft-Snubbed Lawyers May Finally Get Some Respect

The immigration Bar--tiny, iconoclastic and long held in low regard by its counterparts in the higher-ticket realms of the legal universe--faces its biggest challenge ever in the yearlong amnesty program for illegal aliens.

The huge new workload comes on the heels of what immigration lawyers considered an orchestrated attack on their profession by the federal government.

Beginning about two years ago, the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. contends, the immigration Bar was targeted by a joint Labor Department-Justice Department crackdown on alleged immigration scams.

Attorneys in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Boston and other cities found themselves under investigation. Some were suspected of helping arrange sham marriages, others with ignoring their clients’ obvious lies in the immigration process. Many of the investigations involved “labor certifications”--the proof required from employers that no American is qualified for a job before an alien can be brought into the United States to work. Dale Schwartz, the Atlanta lawyer who was chief counsel for thousands of Cuban refugees who successfully resisted deportation after the Mariel boat lift, was indicted on charges of mail fraud and making false statements on behalf of a British emigre.

The charges against Schwartz, now AILA’s national president, were thrown out last May, after Los Angeles attorney Maurice C. Inman, then general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told federal prosecutors they did not have a case.

‘Party Is Over’

Spokesmen for the Labor and Justice departments say the investigation--known as “Operation Strongtree”--never centered on lawyers. But in San Francisco, where the probe now is most active, attorney wrongdoing is very much on the mind of federal prosecutors.

The object is “to tell the immigration attorneys that the party is over,” according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Rudolfo Orjales. “The federal government is not merely interested in prosecuting illegal aliens who come across the Rio Grande, but also (illegal) aliens who can afford to buy a lawyer and afford to set up corporations.”

Federal officials and immigration lawyers have a long history of antagonism--almost as time-honored as the nation’s ambivalence toward immigrants.

Historically, the nation’s immigration courts have lacked the strict rules and decorum of other courtrooms. The examiners who preside in many immigration proceedings often are not lawyers, moreover, and many are frustrated by the attorneys’ ability to prolong and complicate cases.

Angry differences sometimes spill into the hallways and anterooms of INS offices. “I’ve seen people yelling at each other at immigration--lawyers yelling at the immigration service and the service yelling at the lawyers,” said Leonel Castillo, president of Houston International University, who was commissioner of the INS from 1977 to 1979.

“When people have referred to me as an ‘immigration lawyer,’ I don’t know whether to take it as a compliment or a put down,” said San Diego attorney Jan Bejar. “It’s as if they’re saying, ‘You’re not a lawyer. You’re just this guy who fixes papers for people.’ ”