Alien Amnesty Project Mired in Disarray

At One-Stop Immigration in East Los Angeles, there are daily phone calls from anxious illegal aliens wanting to know why their amnesty cases are not moving faster.

In Wilmington, dozens of overburdened volunteers at Holy Family Catholic Church often stay up until midnight struggling to cope with a mountain of applications, while a storefront job-training center in downtown Los Angeles has resorted to handing out flyers on street corners to drum up amnesty business.

Trinity Episcopal Church in the Mid-Wilshire District, another community agency that has volunteered to help immigrants prepare their cases for filing with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has yet to open the doors of its government-approved amnesty application program.

Same Across Country

The disarray is much the same throughout the country. In Houston last week, INS workers were overwhelmed with applications, while on the same day at a center in Buffalo, N.Y., INS workers waited all day without a single applicant.

Nearly two months into the 12-month amnesty that ends May 4, 1988, the program remains bogged down in a mire of logistical, financial and procedural problems, according to many of the private agencies on whom the government is depending. As a result, the number of applications is 50% below what was expected, and government officials are feuding with the private agencies over who is to blame.

Representatives of some of the 800 INS-approved volunteer agencies, or “qualified designated entities” (QDEs), contend that the program is floundering because of confusion over such unwieldy INS requirements as the documentation needed to support an application. Under the new immigration reform law, aliens must document that they have lived continuously in the United States since at least Jan. 1, 1982.

Some agencies are holding back applications until INS answers some crucial questions, such as whether spouses and children of those who qualify will be allowed to remain in the United States.

While INS officials have made overtures toward working more closely with the voluntary agencies to resolve some of these problems, they also warn that they are running out of patience.

Threat From INS

Noting that the agencies were expected to bring in 80% of the applications filed with INS--but have so far been responsible for only 10% of them--INS national legalization director William S. Slattery threatened Friday to bypass the agencies altogether unless they start producing more applications within the next 30 days.

“If we see no improvement, then we will see them more as a deterrent and we will reach out to the alien community directly,” he said.

Meanwhile, some of the voluntary agencies and other observers are beginning to wonder whether the amnesty program can pick up enough speed in the remaining 10 months to make up for lost time. Some are even predicting that an extension of the one-year amnesty program will be needed to prevent thousands of otherwise eligible aliens from missing out on the one-time opportunity.

“Every day they continue to have foul-ups, it means less time for people to get into the system,” said Ernesto Medrano, coordinator of an AFL-CIO amnesty project in Los Angeles. “If there is no extension, I think there will be thousands of people left out in the cold.”

Noting that the INS has responded to pressure from the agriculture and business sectors, extending deadlines in the sections of the law covering employer sanctions and farm workers’ amnesty, some contend that the same concession should be extended to immigrants.

Extension Unlikely

Slattery, other INS officials and congressional supporters of the law dismiss the possibility of an extension. But Harold Ezell, INS Western regional commissioner, although maintaining that the issue is premature, conceded that it is not out of the question.

“I don’t think you should count on it,” Ezell said, insisting that immigrants should apply for the program now, rather than wait. But, he added that he “would not be adamantly against an extension.”

INS has received more than 163,300 applications since May 5, a slow start toward its 3.9-million goal. INS legalization offices throughout the country are receiving only about 7,000 applications per day, a marked improvement since May, but still only about half what the program is geared for, Slattery said.

In recent weeks, officials have begun publicly chastising community agencies for failing to file their expected share of applications. “It’s inconceivable that organizations that profess a level of knowledge (in immigration matters) can’t accomplish what aliens are doing on their own,” Slattery said.

Catholic Charities in Los Angeles, for instance, which is by far the largest of the voluntary agencies, has registered more than 300,000 potential applicants but has filed only about 100 applications with INS.

Agency Criticized

The church agency has come under criticism, not only from INS, but from other observers both inside and outside the church who say that few clients have received any word from the agency since registering. Some complain that they have gone several months without communication from the agency.

Growing impatient, many have turned to other community agencies and private lawyers for help. At the Catholic Church center in Wilmington, for instance, only half of the 43,000 who registered are turning up for interviews, according to the staff.

In Chicago, district INS officials say that some immigrants have become so fed up that they are handling their cases on their own. “The aliens are demanding their applications back (from the agencies) and some want to interview directly with us,” said Don Radcliffe, Chicago INS district legalization officer.

In an effort to ease applicants’ anxiety, Catholic Charities in Los Angeles plans to publish in the church newspaper a schedule of when applicants can expect to come in next month for appointments.

Smarting from the government criticism, the voluntary agencies point out that INS waited until the last minute to spring the program on them. INS did not publish regulations for implementing the law nor begin distributing application forms until a few days before May 5, the day the amnesty program began.

Technical Glitches

Until a few weeks ago, Catholic Charities was still plagued with technical glitches in its computerized system for processing applications and, like most voluntary agencies, is still struggling to attract and train sufficient staff and volunteers.

While Catholic Charities centers throughout the country can depend on the financial support of the U.S. Catholic Conference and local dioceses, some other nonprofit voluntary agencies are in more desperate straits, struggling to finance their programs, which have turned out to be far more expensive than anyone predicted.

The INS contends that it should take no more than an hour or two to prepare an amnesty application and help an immigrant document his life in the United States for the last five years. But community agencies say they have labored for up to 12 hours to process a relatively simple case, and up to 20 hours for more complicated ones.

“These cases are not neat and clean. These are people who have led difficult lives in this country and have not documented them,” said Lavinia Limon, director of Los Angeles’ International Institute.

And most of the 12 national coordinating agencies for the voluntary groups have yet to receive the $16-per-case reimbursement that the INS agreed to pay for the work, according to Gil Carrasco, associate director for migration and refugee services for the U.S. Catholic Conference.

Agency for Asians

Without additional financing and staff, said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, his center will be able to handle only about 2,000 applications. The center is the only nonprofit, multilingual center offering the service in the city’s large Asian community, he said.

The center is a member of Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles, an umbrella group of the city’s voluntary agencies and immigrant rights groups. An immediate goal of the coalition is to join forces with a group of Catholic Church community leaders to lobby corporations and foundations to provide financial support, said Linda Wong, immigration director for the Mexican American Legalization and Educational Defense Fund.

“We hope to get a commitment from major corporations by showing them that (as employers) they have a stake in the outcome of the legalization program,” Wong said.

Many point out that by the very nature of their underground existence, undocumented aliens tend not to keep records. And community agencies say they are running into time-consuming delays because of employers who are reluctant to provide immigrant workers with employment affidavits and because of the red tape involved in acquiring records, such as Social Security and tax documents, from government agencies.

They also complain about a widespread lack of uniformity in the application of the law at the INS’ 107 legalization offices throughout the country.

Regulations Unclear

“INS has not clearly stated to us what documents they would accept as a bare minimum to make applicants eligible,” said Juan Gutierrez, director of One-Stop Immigration Center.

In Van Nuys, for instance, Gutierrez was told he could document a client’s case by providing only income tax records and a few other supporting documents, while at the East Los Angeles center he was informed he would need voluminous documentation to track the client’s residence in the United States week by week, he said.

“You can call 16 different INS offices and you’re going to get 16 different opinions on a case,” said Medrano, of the AFL-CIO. “You can call the INS regional office, the district office and Washington (INS headquarters) and expect different answers. As QDEs (voluntary agencies), we are having a heck of a time trying to figure it out.”

INS officials generally play down these complaints as exaggerations.

Dona Coultice, director for legalization in the INS Western Region, said immigrants merely need to establish “a prima facie case that they are comfortable with. . . . Not one piece of paper for each day (to document continuous residence) but maybe a paper for each month.”

‘Reasonable’ Proof

“We just want you to be able to prove that you’ve been here,” in a way that would convince “a reasonable person,” she said.

A fundamental complaint of the voluntary agencies is that the regulations for implementing the amnesty portion of the law remain overly restrictive and complicated. They maintain that large numbers of applicants face the risk of being denied amnesty because of INS “restrictive” definitions of such critical issues in the law as who is likely to become a “public charge” or how long an alien can be out of the country without breaking the “continuous residency” requirement.

“We have tried to convince INS that if they want this program to work, they are going to have to simplify their regulations and requirements,” said Gil Carrasco, associate director for immigration and refugee services for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “The law itself doesn’t require this technical detail and hoop jumping.”

Maurice A. Roberts, a former chief appellate immigration judge who now is editor of Interpreter Releases, a Washington-based immigration newsletter, contends that Congress never intended the law to be applied so restrictively.

“Congress has made it clear they wanted this to be a one-shot opportunity for legalization and they wanted as many aliens who could qualify to be brought into the mainstream. . . . “ he said. “(INS’) narrow interpretations of the law have the effect of lowering the numbers of aliens who can qualify for this program.”

Seek ‘Mutual Consensus’

Rosa Sipler, director of legalization for Los Angeles Catholic Charities, contends that, after an admittedly shaky start, the church agency and the INS are moving toward a “mutual consensus” on how to document applications. And, having a better sense of what the INS expects, she said the agency expects to begin filing hundreds of applications next month.

And while continuing to vent anger at the performance of voluntary agencies, INS officials have stepped up efforts at fostering closer communication with them. In the INS’ Western region, efforts are under way to standardize documentation requirements, according to Commissioner Ezell. And he has encouraged regular meetings between program officials and the private agencies.

INS officials and the community agencies are anticipating a significant jump in the figures during the next month, as a result of a special 30-day grace period instituted by the INS in an attempt to help the agencies better understand the documentation requirements. During this period, if an application is denied on the basis of documentation, the agencies will be given a second chance to resubmit it with added proof, according to INS officials.

Catholic Charities, like many agencies, remains cautiously optimistic, but others contend that the INS’ efforts are too little too late.

“It’s just not working,” attorney Kwoh said. “There’s not enough time nor money. . . . The way it’s going, only about half of the people expected to file will be able to within the year.”

Calls for Reassessment

“I think there is a need for a reassessment of the program from Congress on down. Is this working the way they wanted?” he asked, suggesting that the INS reassess its regulations and procedures, voluntary groups streamline their operations and government and the corporate sector make a greater financial commitment.

But some worry whether a recovery is possible, even with major changes. “These first two months are irrevocably lost,” said editor Roberts, “and I’m willing to bet that there are aliens out there who haven’t even started trying to acquire the documentation.”

And, some also predict that as the most complicated cases are turned in and as wary immigrants become more trusting of the process, the system will become even more overwhelmed. Some agencies also worry that with limited resources strained by the one-year deadline, they will spend most of their time processing applications and will be prevented from seeking out applicants.

“People are so fearful and distrustful that you need strong outreach to persuade them to come in,” said Steve Nutter, regional director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which plans to process 50,000 immigrants nationwide. Nutter contended that the question is no longer “whether we have an extension, but how long it should be.”

In Congress, an extension would appear to have little support. A spokeswoman for Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a co-author of the amnesty law, said he “is hardly ready to write off the system.”