Amnesty Office Becomes Stage for Real-Life Drama

A man of means who marks his life by schedules and accomplishments, Jorge Zepeda is not often given to superstition. But as he sat waiting for the immigration man to take his picture, it suddenly occurred to him that a familiar turn of fate may have helped him take his first step toward becoming a bona fide American.

He bolted upright in his seat and clapped his hands. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “This is my lucky street. Everything good happens to me on Wilshire Boulevard. My first job came here. My second job was here too. And now this is happening to me. It could only be on Wilshire Boulevard!”

Given Temporary Work Card

It took the Salvadoran emigre less than three hours to get what he had come for at the newly rented office at 1671 Wilshire Blvd. that serves as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s new Hollywood legalization office covering an area from Venice to downtown. He handed over a white cardboard box bulging with documents from every year of the nine years he had spent illegally in the United States. He stammered through a ten-minute interview with an immigration official. Finally, he was photographed and given a laminated card that will serve as his temporary work authorization identification until he can apply for citizenship. After nine years, Jorge Zepeda was legal.

For the 49-year-old data processor and more than a dozen other immigrants who were interviewed for legalization under the nation’s new immigration law last week, the Hollywood office was indeed a lucky address. A few others were less fortunate, having been told they had to come back with more information before they could get their temporary work cards.

And for hundreds of other immigrants, the office was a place of confusion, where application forms sat in stacks one hour and were gone the next and where a single question could yield three perplexing answers.

Because the long lines and crush of mailed applications that had been predicted for the first days of the new law never materialized, the staff of 26 INS veterans and novices who manned the Hollywood office had a week to catch their breath. There was time to master the tics of balky computers and learn the fine points of interviewing immigrants without bullying them.

As the week progressed, it became clear that without the expected mass of humanity and attendant chaos, the office had become a cavernous stage for small human dramas. Row after row of rented chairs sat vacant, while in a few corners of the room immigrants sat alone with their files, applications and private fears. Their triumphs were celebrated by applause from INS interviewers. Their defeats were taken in sullen silences, or in rages against a bureaucracy still in its infancy.

“I know that one of these days, probably sooner than later, all hell will break loose and we’ll be swamped,” said John Bowser, the director of the office. “But for the time being, it’s quite a different place than any of us thought it would be.”

Bowser, 72, a slightly stooped former INS district director, gave up 18 months of retirement at his home deep in the Minnesota woods to come to Los Angeles to help administer the new law.

Veteran Processor

A quiet, bemused man with a penchant for ties as wide as bibs, Bowser was experienced in processing crowds of nervous, anxious immigrants. He was among a squad of INS processors flown to Austria in 1956 to speed the naturalization of Hungarian rebels who fled that country after their short-lived revolt was crushed by Soviet troops. As Bowser prepared for the opening day of the Hollywood office, he expected a similar state of chaos.

“You’re talking about people who want desperately to be citizens,” he said. “They’re tired of running and hiding. But at the same time, they’re deathly afraid and suspicious of us. So they’ll be coming in here with two impulses--to stay, and go on with it, and to get out before their names get into our computers.”

There was not much that Bowser and his staff could do to dispel the bureaucratic atmosphere in the office. With its vaulted ceiling and long hall, the office is as imposing as an airplane hangar. One employee decorated her desk with a vase filled with carnations. A color photograph of blimps flying in the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration was hung over the partitions and a small, green replica of the statue placed on a file table.

Few of the immigrants who came to the office in its first week ventured inside. Most lined up in front of a table near the heavy glass doors at the front entrance, waiting to pick up application forms. In the first 15 days after the office opened, workers handed out more than 16,000 forms. Yet despite the demand, the lines never stretched beyond 40 or 50 applicants, even after the new law went into effect last Tuesday.

Bowser and other officials reasoned that many immigrants were holding back, waiting to see whether the agency could be trusted to process them without deporting them. “They’ve been distrusting us for years,” said Helen Allen, a 30-year INS veteran. “You can’t expect them to walk in with open arms after we’ve been picking them up and sending them home all this time. I’m sure some of them think this is all a trick.”

Familiar Faces

The sidewalk outside took on the appearance of a town square. Street hawkers sold citizenship books and handed out flyers for attorneys and medical clinics. Mothers brought their entire families along--babies wrapped in blankets, young girls dressed in frilly dresses, grandmothers looking on impassively, young boys having mock fights.

On the first day amnesty applications were accepted, two men threw real punches. An hour after application forms ran out, one immigrant tried to slip in front of another emigre standing in line. The two argued and within seconds were rolling on the sidewalk. A security guard intervened, and the two men dusted themselves off, glared at each other and got back into line.

Familiar Faces

At the application desk, INS workers handing out forms noticed after a few days that some familiar faces kept reappearing. When one jug-eared youth showed up for the third time, Elena Surop Irlandez challenged him.

“You were here yesterday,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I was working.”

When she insisted that she recognized him, the boy argued briefly, then shrugged and left. Irlandez said that several days earlier one official followed another youth after he picked up a batch of forms. The boy approached a station wagon parked in the office lot. The driver of the car took the forms and gave the youth a few dollar bills. The man in the car, Irlandez said, turned out to be a lawyer.

“The attorneys are supposed to buy their copies from the Government Printing Office,” said Joe Bezart, Bowser’s deputy. “The problem is that sometimes the printing office runs out. Or else these guys are too lazy or too cheap to order their own.”

The Paper Trails

Among the steady stream of immigrants who came for application forms were a few who had their applications and medical forms already filled out, their $185 processing fee ready and envelopes and boxes stuffed with rent receipts, bank statements, phone and gas bills, high school and college diplomas, tax forms, passports--the paper trails of their lives.

Oscar Reconco arrived in his black-vested waiter’s uniform, hefting a manila envelope crammed with W-2 forms, stereo receipts and reams of other documents. A Salvadoran, Reconco has been living in Los Angeles since coming over the border from Tijuana in 1977, saving even the most obscure scrap of paper.

“A friend of mine once told me that someday there would be a law like this to make us all legal,” Reconco said. He kept all the papers in his Los Feliz apartment, hiding them away after hearing about a friend who lost all his files when his apartment was robbed.

‘Absolutely Perfect’

After talking excitedly to an INS official, Reconco decided to take his files home, go over them one more time and send them in by mail. “I want this to be absolutely perfect,” he said. “I don’t want them to have any reason to deny me.”

The first to get through an interview was a blonde 30-year-old Englishwoman named Patti, who showed up in pale blue jeans and a pink tie-dye shirt. After living in the United States for six years, she was hoping that with a temporary residency, she could finally return to England to visit her parents.

As she was being photographed, Jorge Zepeda sat down for his interview. It had been nine years since he crossed the Mexican-American border into El Paso. In El Salvador, he had been a data programmer. He went into the same business in Los Angeles, starting out at $3.25 an hour. He now lives with his son and makes $25 an hour.

‘This Is Real Life’

“This is not just some ceremony,” Zepeda said. “This is real life for me. I need that card. Do you know how many jobs I have not gone after because I was afraid they would ask for my green card?”

Zepeda was asked to verify his name and his records. Asked if he was a member of the Nazi Party, his eyes widened. “Me?” he asked incredulously. “No, no, no. I do not do such things.”

Then, sitting before an INS photographer, he realized that the temporary work card they were preparing was for him. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. He cupped his hands in front of his face, closed his eyes and prayed for a moment, silently.

When he left, marveling at his work card, INS workers applauded. Zepeda thanked each of them, laughing heartily as he walked to the door.

“Now I can say I am real,” he said.

More than 20 interviews passed the same way. Then, the bubble burst. INS interviewers began finding applications that did not have enough evidence to warrant a recommendation of approval for a temporary work card.

With many of the new staffers unfamiliar with the law, and even veterans unsure about some of its applications, it was difficult to explain to applicants why they could not move through an interview quickly like the others.

Reuben Ramot, a 42-year-old Israeli sculptor, became infuriated when he was told after two visits that he still had not submitted adequate financial information. He had not slept the night before, worrying about what might happen, and now his worst fears were being realized. A former jet pilot in the Israeli air force, he is a college graduate, articulate, cultured, proud--in short, “just the kind of person this country should want.”

But for now, the country was withholding its verdict. Helen Allen patiently explained that Ramot needed to provide more evidence that he would not end up on welfare.

‘I Will Find a Job’

“You are talking about something that isn’t possible,” shouted Ramot, exasperated. “Everything I have done in my life, I have been the best at. I am a sculptor. If I can’t make it as a sculptor then, of course, I will find a job.”

“But, you see, sir, we need evidence that you will not be a public burden,” Allen said.

“Evidence?” Ramot cried. “You are talking about me as a number, not as a human. Is there nowhere in all your forms a place where a man can show that he believes in himself?”

Allen and the other INS workers had no answers. In the end, he stuffed his files back into a shopping bag and trudged out the office door.

John Bowser watched Ramot leave. “He’ll be back,” Bowser said. “If he wants it that bad, he’ll get what he has to get and bring it back.” Bowser thought for a moment and then added: “For his sake, I hope so.”