No Waiting Lines at Agencies Giving Amnesty Aid

The couple--nervous, wary, intimidated about answering questions--had handed over their yellowing rent receipts, utility bills, paycheck stubs. The musty detritus of years, stuffed away in a box somewhere, had suddenly become so critical.

The man and wife handled the accumulated paper work with care, knowing it was the only concrete substantiation of six years of their lives. The mixture of fear and hope was palpable in their eyes.

“Don’t worry,” the counselor, Grace Zimmerman, assured them. “You’re not going to be deported.”

With the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty program already under way for more than six months, undocumented people continue to arrive daily at sites such as this office of Catholic Community Services in San Diego and others nationwide, but the number of people showing up, at least at this point, is surprising fewer than anyone predicted.

Independent agencies--particularly those affiliated with the Roman Catholic church--were supposed to play a pivotal role in the amnesty process, providing a critical buffer for undocumented foreigners who, quite understandably, were thought to be fearful of approaching the immigration service directly.

In fact, many predicted that the bulk of the amnesty applicants nationwide would apply through such “qualified designated agencies,” as the officially certified sites were dubbed in the bureaucrat-speak of the INS.

It hasn’t worked that way. INS officials now estimate that only about 15% of the almost 900,000 applicants nationwide have applied through the agencies; the great majority have approached the INS offices directly. INS spokesman have cited this as proof that the so-called “fear factor” among immigrants was greatly exaggerated.

A Matter of Trust

“The illegal alien applicant has come to trust the INS, which is very reassuring and comforting for us,” said John Belluardo, an INS spokesman in Los Angeles.

But others say that many illegal aliens are still reluctant to take even the first step toward legalization, fearing they or their family members may be be arrested or deported.

“The INS wants to build this air of confidence. But how can they when they keep showing off these captured undocumented men as though they were big trophies?” asked Yolanda Martinez, legalization coordinator for Centro de Asuntos Migratorios, a nonprofit immigrant-assistance organization based in Chula Vista.

Precisely why the role of independent agencies has diminished so drastically from early expectations remains a matter of considerable conjecture. Some blame the agencies’ lack of preparation and cite a general disorganization surrounding the program; others say the INS was too late in providing amnesty guidelines and too stingy in reimbursing the agencies, which received about $15 per applicant from the immigration service.

Another view is that immigrants were able to master the complicated application process more easily than anticipated, and, with the fear of being arrested dissipating, increasingly filed on their own to save the expense and trouble of going through a middleman agency.

Whatever the reason, the result is clear: many of the 900 or so agencies nationwide have been left with little to do.

The agencies’ role has been scaled back from expectations so acutely that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles--which pre-registered more than 300,000 people but has submitted only 15,000 amnesty applications--disclosed recently that it planned to close 6 of its 18 amnesty-processing centers. “It didn’t make a lot of sense to keep a big site operating with only a few clients trickling in,” explained explained Linnea Dahlstrom, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities in Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, the agencies’ reduced role has prompted criticism by INS officials. “They (the agencies) spent too much time talking and not enough time organizing and doing the job,” said Belluardo, the INS official in Los Angeles, who described the agencies contribution as “disappointing.”

‘Strong Relationship’

In San Diego, however, despite the agencies’ relatively reduced role--only about 10% of applicants here have filed through the organizations--the INS has mostly good words for the agencies. “We have a strong relationship with them,” said James Turnage, INS district director here.

In fact, Robert L. Coffman, who heads the INS legalization office in San Diego, is a former long-time employee of Catholic Community Services, which runs the largest independent amnesty program here.

Unlike the Catholic program in Los Angeles, church officials in San Diego say they are meeting their goals--and are planning to expand. “We’re just about on target for what we originally estimated,” said Robert Moser, assistant director for refugee settlement and immigration for Catholic Community Services in San Diego.

But the shortfall in anticipated amnesty clients has forced some smaller social service agencies in San Diego to reduce immigration staff, cut back services, and, in at least one case, shut down altogether.

“We closed it because we didn’t have any business,” said Catherine Tafoya, comptroller for the Mexican-American Opportunity Foundation, a Monterey Park-based group that has closed six centers in California, including one in San Ysidro, because there weren’t enough customers.

Despite such problems, there is no doubt that the agencies continue to play a significant role in assisting some applicants, disseminating information, and providing a low-cost alternative to direct contact with the INS. (The agencies are permitted to charge up to $100 per client, plus an additional $50 for providing photographs and fingerprints, which are required as part of the application. Attorneys typically charge many times that fee.)

“They (the agencies) are left with a lot of the toughest cases,” said Duke Austin, an INS spokesman in Washington. “We don’t have the staff to assist these people putting together their applications.”

In addition, observers noted that many applicants make use of the agencies’ initial counseling services, but eventually file on their own. Also, many other nonprofit agencies who were not certified by the INS also provide considerable guidance to amnesty-seekers.

‘Positive Impact’

“The voluntary agencies see a lot more people than they actually represent,” noted Linda Wong, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Los Angeles. “They’ve had a very positive impact.”

In San Diego and Imperial counties, Catholic Community Services pre-registered some 20,000 prospective amnesty applicants by May 5, the date when the INS began accepting applications. Most applicants have until next May 4 to apply.

Under the new immigration law, two groups of illegal aliens may qualify for some form of temporary legal status: those who have been living in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982, and agricultural laborers who performed at least 90 days of farm work during a recent one-year period.

Of the 20,000 persons who pre-registered in San Diego and Imperial counties, the Catholic group has contacted about half, of whom 7,000 have filed applications through the agency. By next May, said Moser, the agency’s immigration official, the organization expects to meet its original target of about 15,000 applications filed.

Currently operating with a staff of about 30 full-time workers at 14 sites, Moser said the agency is planning to expand its Imperial County operation. The program is largely self-supporting, he said. Volunteers, many of them working in parishes, have assisted greatly, he added.

“We’ve attended national and regional meetings, and we know the news isn’t very good elsewhere,” said Moser. “Here in San Diego I think we approached it more cautiously than some others did. We didn’t go out and invest in a lot of hardware and we didn’t hire a lot of attorneys . . . We took the approach that this was a pay-as-you-go program, and that we could not operate in the red.”

In addition, Moser said that the agency attempted to minimize conflicts with the INS. “Our approach is to look upon this as a program, not as a legal confrontation,” he noted.

Times Got Difficult

On a recent morning at the Catholic Community Services central offices in the Mission Gorge area, Grace Zimmerman, a legalization assistant, was interviewing a man and wife from Mexico; they said they had been living in San Diego since August, 1981. Natives of the Mexican interior state of Nayarit, they said they came to the United States when times got too difficult.

“We had a small vegetable stand in the market in our town (Villa Hidalgo), but it was difficult to earn enough even to feed our children,” said the man, a soft-spoken, thin 38-year-old who asked that his name not be used. “We crossed over into San Diego, worked hard and sent money back to our families. It was very difficult to leave our children, particularly for my wife. She cried all the time.”

Just last year their four children, aged 10 to 17, entered San Diego illegally; they have been living with the couple here since, attending school, learning English. The children will not be eligible for amnesty, but, if both parents qualify, they will be temporarily protected from deportation under the INS’ latest guidelines. Initially, the man said, the couple approached an attorney to assist them apply for amnesty.

“We paid $300--and he did nothing for us,” he recalled.

Finally, through the church, they filed with Catholic Community Services. Their application, complete with considerable documentation--past pay stubs, bills, canceled checks--appears strong, said Zimmerman, the legalization assistant.