Deadlines Under Immigration Law Create Confusion

Elias Beltran appeared to be caught in a bind. The 44-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico believed he had only 30 days to file amnesty applications for himself, his wife and two children, under the landmark legalization provisions of the new immigration law.

But Beltran was having trouble securing timely appointments with a physician authorized to conduct the medical examinations required of amnesty applicants. “We can’t get the medical (exam) until the end of the month, and they say it could take a few days to get the results back,” Beltran, a maintenance worker in San Diego, explained as he waited at the legalization office here with his wife. “It could be too late by then.”

While most foreign nationals have an entire year to file, Beltran believed that he was part of a minority who have only 30 days to submit amnesty applications. Under the new immigration law, certain amnesty seekers already involved in deportation cases must file their amnesty documents by June 3, which is 30 days after the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service began accepting applications.

Beltran said that one INS employee told him that his family’s case came under the 30-day cutoff. As it turned out, however, they are not affected by the deadline. The Beltran family has all year to apply.

June 3 Deadline for Some

Nonetheless, the confusion encountered by Beltran illustrates the uncertainty surrounding a relatively little-noticed section of the complex law requiring that certain amnesty applicants file their forms within 30 days. Throughout the nation, an undetermined number of amnesty seekers are under pressure to file their applications by June 3.

Among immigrant rights groups, there is widespread concern that many applicants in the 30-day category will miss the opportunity to apply, either because they are unaware of the deadline or because they simply have insufficient time to gather the large volume of evidence needed to support amnesty claims. Critics fault the INS for inadequately notifying affected applicants and not allowing more time.

“We’re seeing a real backlog,” said Lynn Alvarez, directing attorney with El Rescate, which provides legal and social services to Central Americans in Los Angeles. “I don’t think many of the 30-day people have even applied, and the time (for applications) is almost half over,” “I think that only about 10% of the people who have to apply in the first 30 days will actually apply; the other 90% will miss it.”

Those who miss the deadline are unlikely to get another chance to apply because there is no appeal process for such cases.

“This particular group may fall through the cracks; they’re lost in the shuffle,” said Charles Kamasaki, director of policy analysis for the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group in Washington.

The INS maintains that everyone was adequately notified of the 30-day requirement, either in person or in writing, and that the time alloted is enough to prepare an amnesty application. “No matter what time period we picked, someone would always say it was insufficient,” said John Belluardo, a spokesman for the INS’s regional office in Los Angeles.

Number in Dispute

Just how many amnesty-seekers are affected by the 30-day deadline remains unknown--and a source of some dispute. Ernest Gustafson, district INS director in Los Angeles, estimated that fewer than a dozen amnesty applicants in the Los Angeles area would come under the 30-day deadline, despite the region’s huge undocumented population. Gustafson’s estimate is “incredibly low,” said Charles Wheeler, director of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights in Los Angeles.

In San Diego, the U.S. Border Patrol estimates that between 500 and 1,000 illegal aliens apprehended here in recent months will have to file their applications within the first 30 days. San Diego is the busiest patrol sector along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Under INS regulations implementing the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986, amnesty applicants who must file within the 30-day period include certain illegal aliens who were arrested by immigration agents between last Nov. 6, the date the immigration statute was signed into law, and May 5, the start of the amnesty application period.

If these aliens were able to convince authorities that they had strong, or prima facie cases for amnesty, they were permitted to remain in the United States legally until June 3 in order to file their amnesty applications, according to the INS. Also required to file by June 3 are illegal aliens who received official INS deportation summonses--known as orders to show cause--between Nov. 6 and May 5 and were able to defer deportation proceedings by demonstrating strong cases for amnesty.

Because the INS will not begin accepting amnesty applications under the agricultural worker section of the law until June 1, agricultural laborers under 30-day deadlines will have a different time requirement: They can submit amnesty applications until June 30.

Under the new immigration law, two sets of illegal aliens may qualify for temporary legal status--those who have lived in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982, and farm workers who have put in at least 90 days of agricultural labor during the 90-day period that ended on May 1, 1986. Eventually, successful applicants will have opportunities to become permanent legal U.S. residents.

Confusion Confounded

For some, the 30-day deadline will linger beyond the first month of the amnesty application period. INS guidelines also state that all aspiring amnesty applicants arrested or served with deportation orders after May 5 will have only 30 days to apply.

To further confuse the matter, besides those arrested or issued INS orders to show cause since Nov. 6, there is still another group of illegal aliens who believe that they are under the 30-day requirement. Affected are deportable foreigners--an official acknowledged that there could be hundreds nationwide, although the exact number is not known--who received orders from the Board of Immigration Appeals directing them to submit their amnesty applications within 30 days.

Because the INS has revised its early thinking on these cases, most recipients of these orders from the Board of Immigration Appeals will actually have all year to apply for amnesty, according to Gerald Hurwitz, counsel to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department office that oversees the board. However, the orders have nonetheless prompted many attorneys to expedite their clients’ cases and, to be on the safe side, file applications within the first 30 days.

“I’m not taking any chances,” said Jan Bejar, an immigration attorney in San Diego who says he represents several undocumented immigrants in this category.

Congress included the 30-day requirement in the law, although some critics maintain that INS guidelines have exceeded congressional authority by imposing the requirement too broadly, an assertion denied by the INS. The matter could provide a basis for future litigation, according to some lawyers representing aliens.

The 30-day deadline has been a somewhat fuzzy provision since immigration reform was signed into law last Nov. 6 and the INS began drafting regulations to implement the statute.

An early interpretation was that the 30-day requirement would apply to all would-be amnesty applicants currently in any kind of deportation proceeding--a suggestion that would undoubtedly have led to a crunch of applicants during the first month. The INS apparently never formally proposed including such a broad group under the 30-day deadline, but the suggestion has led to a widespread misconception that still lingers in many quarters.

That misconception is evidently what prompted an INS worker to inform Elias Beltran, the undocumented maintenance worker in San Diego, that his family fell within the 30-day category. (The family has been in deportation proceedings since January, 1986--well before the enactment of the law last November.)

Whether most of those included in the 30-day category will be able to file on time remains an open question.

Few Applications Locally

In San Diego, INS officials at the legalization office in Serra Mesa said last week that they had only received a handful of applications from aliens under the 30-day filing deadline. However, Maria Elena Verdugo, coordinator of the legalization program for Catholic Community Services, said that agency was preparing applications for about 200 aliens who fit into the 30-day category.

“Our attitude is to file them as soon as possible,” said Verdugo.

Because amnesty applicants facing 30-day deadlines are under time constraints, procedural snafus in the amnesty program tend to affect them most.

Among the key problems encountered so far are a lack of needed forms, such as applications, fingerprint cards and medical examination documents, that are required in order to apply for amnesty. Adding to the delays is a nationwide shortage of physicians certified to conduct the needed examinations of applicants.

“People are running around like chickens without their heads looking for forms,” said Alvarez of El Rescate. “The INS doesn’t have its act together, but on the other hand it requires undocumented people--who are by and large poor and uneducated--to have their acts together.”

Moreover, critics charge, the complexity of the application process can make it almost impossible to complete the paper work within 30 days. Applicants must complete a four-page questionnaire that is essentially a history of their time in the United States; they are asked to name--and, in some cases, to document--every employer, every residence and each absence from the country.

“This really puts people into a bind; it can be extremely difficult to get hold of original documents, say, from Mexico,” said Linda Wong, who heads the immigrants’ civil rights program with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Los Angeles. “They could forfeit eligibility for no other reason than the fact that they can’t get through the bureaucratic red tape in time.”