Operation Amnesty : INS Is Still Waiting for Onslaught

A week after they opened for business, workers at Orange County’s three U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service legalization offices are still waiting for the onslaught to begin.

While INS employees have distributed advice and thousands of amnesty application forms to illegal aliens, the long lines and confusion predicted by agency critics before the program began have failed to materialize.

“It was really hectic getting ready for it, but since we got everything in place, the operation has been really smooth,” said George Newland, chief legalization officer at the INS’ Santa Ana legalization office.

The Santa Ana office force has passed out more than 10,000 applications so far, Newland said. The 10 applications that have been returned and processed received recommendations for approval, and 30 more applications are pending, he said.

The Anaheim and Buena Park offices have given out another 12,600 application forms, officials at those centers said.

New INS employees who received intensive training in recent weeks had a lot of time last week to study the new immigration law some more. Their workload will increase in the coming weeks as applications are filed and applicants are called in for interviews--as many as 250 a day at the Santa Ana and Anaheim offices.

“I expected longer lines,” Santa Ana legalization officer Julie Cuellar said. “I think people are staying away because they are afraid of the INS.”

Ted Warlick, a Santa Ana legalization officer, said that after opening day not many people were coming in but that the number is increasing daily.

“As the word gets around, more people will come in,” he said.

About 95% of those who have requested application forms are Latino, Newland said, but he expects that there will be applicants of almost every nationality.

One of the first applicants interviewed at the Santa Ana office was an Australian who had overstayed her tourist visa, Newland said. Another, who filed a well-documented case without the assistance of a lawyer or a voluntary agency, came from Hong Kong, said Dorita M. Kimble, deputy legalization officer.

“Some of the applications have been very strong,” Kimble said. Others, however, have been mailed in with little or no proof of continuous residence since 1982, as required under the landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Those applications either will be returned to the applicants or delayed until more documentation is offered, she said.

“We’re waiting for guidelines from the (Los Angeles) district office on how to handle those,” Kimble said.

So far, the typical applicants have been “ordinary couples working together, trying to meet financial responsibility, saving money to try to buy a house,” Warlick said.

But many professional people are also applying for amnesty, Cuellar said.

“Not everybody has to walk across the border,” she said. “Many came as students or tourists.”

But those applicants who do ask for application forms in Spanish, Warlick said, are confused to find out they are only available in English.

One family Warlick interviewed last week came to the United States from Mexico in 1978 and has an American-born child. The husband works in construction, the wife as a seamstress.

“They’re doing quite well. They’re buying their own little stucco, paying their own bills,” he said. “They seemed like nice people, and they were going to make it.”

Cuellar also remembered a Chilean woman she interviewed.

The woman, who came to the United States in the mid-1970s, had meticulously gathered every pay stub from the day she started working, Cuellar said, but was still nervous when she came to the legalization office.

After she was interviewed and received her temporary work authorization card, though, “She was literally jumping around the office,” Cuellar said. “She was so happy . . . like there was a big load off her back.”