90% Seeking Amnesty Given Tentative Legal Status, INS Reports

The vast majority of illegal immigrants who have gone through the first phase of the amnesty program in Southern California in the last three weeks have been recommended for legal status and given temporary work cards, according to federal immigration officials.

More than 5,300 immigrants out of about 5,800 interviewed by Thursday in California and neighboring western states, or about 90%, had been tentatively approved by government examiners for legal status. Most of those who were not given temporary work authorization were asked to provide more documents to support their cases, officials said.

Ernest Gustafson, Los Angeles district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he is confident that the high percentage of immigrants recommended for legal status would hold for the one-year duration of the amnesty program. He added that the figures also indicate that INS legalization examiners have been flexible with early applicants.

“The numbers show what we’ve said all along,” he said. “The cases have been clean and our people are processing cases through as fast as they can. If this isn’t generosity, I don’t know what is.”

While even some of the agency’s harshest critics acknowledged that the program appears to be running smoothly, others complained of administrative mix-ups and expressed concern that many potential applicants are holding back because of continuing anxieties in the immigrant community.

Still, at legalization centers in the Los Angeles area, INS officials said they were routinely handing out temporary work authorization cards to just about all immigrants who completed their first interviews. Only those whose documentation appears to be in order--roughly two out of three applicants thus far--are granted interviews to verify the paper work and check their history.

On one recent Friday at the Huntington Park office, for example, INS examiners interviewed 84 applicants, then handed out 80 temporary work cards.

“I haven’t recommended a single denial in the entire three weeks,” said Richard Quirk, the office director. “Once they hit the interview stage, they have no problems.”

After a slow start three weeks ago, INS officials say that many of their larger processing offices are now interviewing as many as 100 immigrants per day. The El Monte and Hollywood offices have become so busy that they are phasing out the walk-in interviews that were being carried out in the early days of the program and are now conducting interviews only by appointment.

Guadalupe Ochoa, director of the El Monte office, attributed increased demand at his office to a lessening of fears about the amnesty program. He said that immigrants leaving the office with their work cards have been showing them to friends and relatives, who in turn show up to apply for their own cards.

No Bus Waiting

“You see how thrilled they are when they walk out with their cards,” Ochoa said. “They realize that there’s no green and white (border patrol) bus waiting around the corner to stack them up and take them back across the border.”

A number of immigration attorneys and representatives of church and independent counseling agencies who had voiced skepticism about the amnesty program said they were pleasantly surprised by the INS’ performance thus far.

“The INS people have been efficient, courteous, prompt,” said immigration attorney Ira Bank. “If they had report cards, they’d get straight ‘A’s.’ ”

Some INS critics, however, observed that the early applicants tended to have clear-cut cases and predicted that the approval rate will decline as people with more difficult cases enter the system.

Moreover, they contend that the INS has faced a light caseload in the first few weeks, in part because many people are afraid to apply for fear that their families might be split up. In addition, tens of thousands of applications are still being processed by overworked independent agencies, critics note.

Changes in Regulations

One independent agency, One-Stop Immigration Center, reported that 300 early applications were delayed by uncertainty over changes in amnesty regulations. Juan Gutierrez, the group’s director, said the applications were delayed for two weeks because of INS “flip-flops” on regulations governing the filing of medical and Social Security forms.

“We had people calling up very angrily, asking why their cases hadn’t been processed yet,” Gutierrez said. Still, he had praise for the program. “They’ve (INS) been as good as they can, considering the resources available and how little time they had to get ready.”

Other independent agencies said they were worried by signs that their first applications were being returned by INS examiners because they lacked adequate documentation. The Rev. Luis Olivares, of Los Angeles’ Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, said that during a recent meeting of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, several directors of independent agencies complained that large numbers of early applications were being returned without appointments for interviews.

One group, Olivares said, reported that only three of its first batch of 37 applications had been accepted for interviews. The rest were returned for more documentation.

Some Are Discouraged

“A lot of these decisions are being made by examiners who do not have a lot of experience or any experience at all,” Olivares said. “My big concern is that some of these applications are being sent back too quickly. We may end up with some people getting discouraged by having to keep looking for more documents. In some cases, it might even be better to get a recommended denial and then appeal it down the line.”

INS officials said that of the 10,900 applications that had been received by Thursday in the Western Region (about 75% of those in the seven-county Los Angeles district), 7,900 had been complete enough to accept fees and schedule interviews.

Dona Coultice, associate western regional director for legalization, said that the great majority of the remaining 3,000 applications were returned to immigrants for additional documentation. A few applicants were told they clearly do not qualify and that there would be no point in applying, she said. Only about 90 cases had actually been recommended for denial, she said.

Officials have predicted that perhaps more than one million people may eventually apply in the Los Angeles region alone, although the pace would have to pick up considerably for that to occur. The new federal law offers amnesty to illegal aliens who have lived in this country since before January, 1982.

Gustafson of the INS said that the large number of applications returned for more documentation showed the agency’s flexibility. He said that most applicants preferred getting a second chance at shoring up their cases to submitting weak cases which would probably be denied for lack of evidence.

“Why should we recommend for denial when they can go back and get more documents?” Gustafson said. “It would only clog up the system with denied cases that could have otherwise been approved.”