Laguna Niguel : Amnesty Center Opened in Holifield Building
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Wednesday officially opened a 60,000-square-foot processing center in Laguna Niguel, where the final decision on hundreds of thousands of amnesty applications will be made.
Located in the Chet Holifield Building on La Paz Road, the center will employ about 150 people when fully staffed and will handle all applications for legal resident status from illegal aliens in California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam.
More than five miles of empty shelves await the anticipated 2.1 million applications that will come out of local legalization offices with recommendations to either approve or deny.
About 6,000 applications can be processed daily at the center, according to Joe Thomas, director of the facility. The first batch of 380 applications arrived last week, and another 1,000 arrived Wednesday.
Some applicants in the western region could be receiving notification of approval by the end of this week, he said, making them the first illegal aliens in the country to receive temporary resident status under the landmark legislation passed by Congress last fall.
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