Agencies Get Bogged Down in Amnesty Paper Work

At Catholic Charities offices in Orange County, amnesty volunteers are drowning in paper work. Of the 15,000 to 16,000 applications they’ve received, less than 1,000 have been completed.

Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church of the Messiah received only 19 applicants one week, Amnesty Program Manager Vanessa Fonda said, far from the 100 weekly applications that Episcopal Services expected when it applied to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to process them.

The scene repeats across the county for attorneys, for profit-oriented immigration clinics and volunteer groups (called “qualified designated entities,” or QEDs) helping to register immigrants in the yearlong program. For some, business is booming. Others wonder where the boom went.

World Relief of Southern California expected 40,000 applications by the amnesty deadline. So far, the group has taken 4,357 applications, nearly half of those at the three Orange County offices, associate director Luis Madrigal said. At this rate, World Relief will finish no more than 20,000 by the end of the amnesty filing period.

But at the three INS legalization offices in Orange County, workers are operating at capacity, interviewing 750 applicants a day, said George Newland, chief legalization officer at the office in Santa Ana. That office is booked solid through Aug. 18, and there are 500 to 1,000 applications sitting in his office that have not been taken out of their envelopes, he said.

At Alien Legalization for Agriculture, volunteers had to shut their doors to new applicants last week to keep abreast of the stream of paper work, said Tony Bonilla, executive director for Orange County. That group has just about reached its projection of 100 applications a week, he said.

Nationwide, the amnesty program, which got off to a slow start in its first three months because of a low turnout among illegal aliens, has gained momentum in recent weeks.

In Los Angeles, Catholic Charities, the largest volunteer amnesty processing operation in the country, had submitted only 100 cases to Immigration and Naturalization Service legalization offices by the end of June. By last week, the number had jumped to 1,000.

The increased numbers have appeared as relations improve between the volunteer groups and the INS, which is administering the amnesty program. The backlogs at Catholic Charities and other volunteer groups had been a continuing source of tension, with volunteer groups claiming that amnesty cases were taking hours to process and that the INS was unwilling to provide clear guidelines on the amount of documentation required.

The government agency, for example, has said it should take one or two hours to document and complete an amnesty application, said Father Jaime Soto of Catholic Charities. Soto insisted that it can take between 12 and 20 hours for volunteer workers to document where applicants have been living for the past six years, what their family histories are and whether they will be financially independent.

Caught Unprepared

In turn, the INS complained that the volunteer groups were caught unprepared and held back cases to pressure the INS to make changes in its policies.

In Orange County, some private attorneys also have accused the amnesty application centers of hiring inexperienced volunteers and falling behind in their paper work.

Yolanda Arellano, with the Tustin law firm of Wallin, Roseman & Klarich, said illegal immigrants will pay the $500 to $1,500 for personal representation because they think a law firm will do the job more quickly than a QED and with more confidentiality.

Ibarra said her firm has a steady stream of clients paying $500 just for her to appear with them at the INS interview and $500 to prepare the documents with no appearance. But many have balked at the price.

So she and four other immigration attorneys opened the Lawyers Amnesty Clinic, expecting 5,000 applications in the amnesty period for $195 each. But she said business is well below that.

But amnesty volunteers are critical of the immigration attorneys’ prices and their advertising. Illegal aliens, the volunteers say, are being enticed into paying up to 15 times more than necessary.

Remaining Underground

While immigration attorneys, amnesty application centers and the INS argue over who is not doing the job it should and for how much, two-thirds of the conservatively estimated 60,000 illegal immigrants eligible for amnesty in Orange County have so far remained underground, the INS’ Newland said.

Madrigal, of World Relief, said, “If the goal is to legalize immigrants to get a handle on this vast sea of people in our society, we are certainly all failing. This is the most significant event in the Southwest all this century. It should have been administered in that spirit.”

Still, applications are increasing. “Things are picking up quite substantially,” said Gil Carrasco, associate director of immigration and refugee services for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “We’re feeling a little more comfortable with our numbers, and I would hope that the INS is, too.”

Although INS officials said they are heartened by such increases, they contend that the program is still moving too slowly. Differences still exist between the agency and the volunteer groups, particularly over how to handle cases of families that may be split up by the amnesty program. Volunteer groups also fear that thousands of illegal aliens could lose their jobs this fall unless the INS extends a Sept. 1 deadline for newly hired workers to apply for amnesty.

“It would be nice to say that all our problems are over,” INS National Legalization Director William S. Slattery said. “We’re encouraged by the attitude of the agencies and some of the latest trends, but the numbers haven’t gone high enough yet to make us breathe any easier.”

Volunteer Groups’ Role

INS officials had once predicted that 70% to 80% of the amnesty applications would come from the volunteer groups. But by the end of June, the organizations had only provided 7.9% of all applications.

Even after the latest surge, the INS said, volunteer agencies accounted for only slightly more than 10% of the 330,000 applications filed throughout the nation by last week. The rest of the applications have been filed directly with INS legalization offices.

William King, director of immigration reform for the INS’ western region, said the agency now expects that the volunteer groups will account for only 40% to 50% of all applications filed by next May, the end of the yearlong amnesty period.

INS officials had predicted that as many as 3.9 million illegal aliens might qualify for amnesty in that period but now expect only 2 million illegal aliens to qualify. They said they have the capacity to legalize up to 3.9 million.

A month ago, INS officials were so alarmed by the slow pace of applications coming from volunteer agencies that they threatened to bypass the agencies altogether and encourage immigrants to apply directly to them. Immigration officials are pessimistic that large volunteer efforts, such as Catholic Charities, will completely catch up on its backlog by the end of the amnesty program.

‘More Cooperation’

But Slattery and other INS officials, expecting a new wave of amnesty applications in August, have retreated from the threats of a month ago, conceding that “we’re seeing more cooperation.”

Representatives of volunteer groups said the INS has also shown more cooperation in recent weeks. The situation has eased, volunteer groups said, because INS officials are now willing to give them specific information on the types and amount of required documents. In Denver, for example, the INS worked out an arrangement with volunteer groups so that they need only provide evidence every three months of an illegal alien’s stay in the United States.

“That kind of specific information is crucial for us,” said David Moore, director of Catholic Charities’ legalization program in Denver. “It gives us guidelines that we didn’t have a few weeks ago. Now we don’t have to worry about documenting every aspect of an applicant’s life.”

Catholic Charities officials in several cities said that the INS also helped ease their backlogs by giving them a 60-day grace period in which volunteer groups will be able to forward cases to the INS without worrying that they will be denied for lack of adequate documents. Any cases sent in during this period, which ends Aug. 16, that do not have sufficient documents will simply be turned back to the agencies for more work.

Volunteer groups hope that the INS will be equally responsive in extending the September deadline under which newly hired workers must apply for amnesty. As part of the employer sanctions provision of the immigration law, illegal aliens who were hired since last Nov. 6 (the day the law went into effect) were given until Sept. 1 to file for amnesty. Those who have not filed by that date risk being fired by their employers.

Slattery and other INS officials said they do not foresee any extension or changes in the September deadline.

“We haven’t heard any consensus to extend the deadline,” Slattery said.

The September deadline worries Soto of Catholic Charities.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re booked almost completely through August.”