Risk of Separation for Illegal Alien Families Under the Amnesty Law
Doris M. Meissner’s excellent column (“A Better Fate for Split Families,” Op-Ed Page, Nov. 5) unfortunately carries one painful inaccuracy. Meissner suggests that non-qualifying immediate relatives of those who receive amnesty are probably not at much actual risk of deportation.
Perhaps that is true in other parts of the country. Here in Southern California under Immigration and Naturalization Service Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell, business raids and street sweeps have continued at record pace. Stories of deportations circulate through the community almost every day. INS holding facilities are filled with unattended children being used as bait to capture their undocumented parents.
The risk for so many is real and tangible. That such a policy of family separation could even be called “family fairness” by the Reagan Administration points to a profound lack of concern for those in the amnesty process and to the continuing need for change in current immigration.
REV. THOMAS H. SMOLICH
Proyecto Pastoral
Los Angeles
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