Commentary : Amnesty Abuses Hurt Everyone

Say that the Immigration Reform Act is going to hit Orange County’s economy harder than any other in California. Not many reflective people will argue, given the racial makeup of our blue-collar army, and the willingness of its undocumented regiments to work at unpleasant jobs in field and factory at minimum wage.

You’d think more county employers would try to preserve this bargain labor by financing and helping facilitate the amnesty efforts of their immigrant workers. Yet this happens so rarely it rates headline-space when it does.

Unless he’s a genius at paper work, the worker must get help with the baffling complexities of the amnesty process, and much of the wrong kind is available. A number of Southern Californians have hustled themselves into the immigration business, and have devised elegant ways of turning a buck while the amnesty window stays open.

Tidings of their benevolence pile up on the desks of Spanish newspapers, nonprofit agencies trying to ease the amnesty burden, and lawyers whose offices serve as salvage-yards for bungled cases.

The schemes are costly, dangerous, and so blatantly illegal they are being looked into by authorities. None has been prosecuted. So the complaints are mere stories, which--like the storytellers--are not yet documented. But consider:

The lawyer in Los Angeles who charged $1,300, took the originals of the client’s amnesty documents and demanded another $1,300 before he would give them back.

The Riverside lawyer who told his client he must “prove continuous residence” by making a weekly office-visit at $20 a visit.

The Orange County lawyer who charges $100 just to translate the amnesty applications.

The South County lawyer who writes “self-attestation” letters to employers, saying the worker is applying for amnesty and may work until Sept. 1 (something the worker can do himself), and wholesales these among carwash attendants for $300 apiece.

The Orange County notary who charged an amnesty client $4,000, which is grossly illegal for a notary but allows a nice profit even if he’s caught and fined.

The Los Angeles notary who took the originals of a client’s tax records and sold copies back to him for $50 a page.

The “immigration consultant” in Orange who charged one client $3,500 and two others $4,500.

The Indio consultant, as told to Legal Aid Society, who took an alien’s $2,000 and then reported him to the Immigration Service. This Indio champion also took the originals of his client’s amnesty documents and held them hostage, a practice widespread and federally illegal.

Also reported are a number of advisers who have supplied their clients counterfeit green-cards and phony work-authorizations, and made them a party to fraud. (The INS has said it will forgive mistakes in an application but won’t forgive fraud.)

Another common scheme is to tell a client he is eligible for amnesty when the client is obviously not. The immigrant who shops around for a “yes” answer will eventually find it, paying $300 to $400 for the fatal misinformation.

Such horror-stories may serve as warning-signs to the immigrant, or make him more frightened of advisers than he is of the INS. Yet he must deal with the INS--Congress has arranged for him to starve if he doesn’t--and unless he’s a genius at paper work he will probably need advice.

He must trace movements he has tried to leave untraceable for the last 65 months, and he must prove he was illegal all that time--the Immigration Reform Act being one of the rare laws in history that penalizes legality.

The immigrant must cross-examine his would-be adviser, determine his qualifications and find out what he charges for what kind of help over what period of time. Let’s add the complication that the immigrant knows nothing of law and speaks no English.

He must grit his teeth and know that effective help is available somewhere: from churches, community-agencies, unions, responsible advisers and experienced lawyers who don’t charge an arm and a leg. (One veteran Santa Ana immigration attorney, a respected member of the Bar, finds that he can guarantee complete representation of an amnesty client for an average of $450.)

Help may also be available, one happy day, from city and county governments who see their economies going up the flue. And from the corporate commanders who suddenly find themselves trying to fight battles with no troops.