Eyes on a Prize of Legal Status

They began arriving early in the morning at an Oxnard market, stood in line in temperatures that soared into the mid-80s and stayed late into the night.

In the end, so many aliens showed up Saturday at a daylong drive to register at La Gloria Market for the federal amnesty program that the event had to be continued to the next day.

By the end of the weekend, about 2,000 people turned out for the drive, which was held in conjunction with similar Immigration and Naturalization Service efforts throughout the West. Of those who came, 560 actually filed for amnesty.

One of the 40 volunteers who helped walk aliens through the cumbersome application procedure--Raphael Ramos of a group called the South Coast Alien Legalization for Agriculture--described the turnout as “overwhelming.”

INS Claims Success

For INS officials, long criticized by immigration advocates as insensitive to the needs of illegal aliens, the crowds flocking to La Gloria demonstrated how unfounded such criticisms have been.

“This is indicative of the success we’re having reaching out to people,” said Mark Hill, chief legalization officer in the INS’ Ventura County office in Oxnard. “We’re getting the word out to people and they’re coming forward . . . . You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone out there who didn’t hear about amnesty or whether they qualify.”

Hill said that more than 24,000 undocumented workers of an estimated 35,000 in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties have filed for amnesty. Based on a tabulation in November, he estimated that Ventura County residents account for half of those who have registered for either of two amnesty programs.

One gives residency status to illegal aliens living in the Unites States since 1982. The other does the same for undocumented farm laborers living in the United States since 1985.

Hill said the Oxnard office, in cooperation with a new INS office in Santa Maria, could reach the remaining 11,000 potential applicants by the May 4 deadline.

A report compiled by local immigration activists in December characterized INS amnesty efforts as inadequate and asked for a one-year extension of the deadline.

The task force, convened by the Oxnard-based social service and advocacy group El Concilio, said that only 4,000 applications had been received by the end of November by the local INS office. It criticized that figure as “disappointing.”

In fact, the INS office had logged 20,000 applications by the end of November, Hill said.

The executive director of El Concilio, Marcos Vargas, said he could not account for the discrepancy between the figures and stood by the earlier call for an extension. He said his group also wants the INS to establish a detention and hearing facility in Ventura County.

Cases Handled in L.A.

Immigration cases involving Ventura County residents are now handled in Los Angeles County, where, immigrant advocates claim, illegal aliens are pressured to agree to deportation.

“I’d hesitate to say that it’s been a success,” Vargas said of the amnesty effort. “I think there’s still a lot of work to do.”

The reported success of the local amnesty drive mirrors that claimed by INS officials throughout California and the West. The INS’ Western Division has received nearly nearly 850,000 applications for amnesty, and, after heavily publicized drives in major cities, anticipates 1 million by the end of next week, said INS spokesman Joe Flanders.

INS officials are taking to the streets in the effort. Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell has appeared with a trained orangutan, an Elvis Presley impersonator and musical groups of all stripes to spread the word.

The Oxnard drive also aimed to please.

Hill teamed with La Gloria, an Oxnard market and Latino social center in the west county, to publicize the event with radio spots four times an hour on three Spanish-language radio stations.

Prospective applicants were invited to enjoy the music of a wandering mariachi band and meet Salvadoran heartthrob Alvaro Torres, who was scheduled to give a concert that evening in Goleta.

Torres was not scheduled to sing, said market owner Enrique Ibarra. If he did, said Ibarra, “this place would be a madhouse. We’d lose control.”

“The women especially like him,” explained Jose Luis Valencia, a disc jockey on KTRO, a Spanish-language radio station in Oxnard.

The entertainment highlight of the day came early in the afternoon when a limousine pulled in front of the market off U.S. 1. A security guard in black patent leather shoes and mirrored sunglasses opened a car door for Torres and young women rushed to him.

Several followed him inside the market to get an autographed photograph or pose in a Polaroid snapshot with him, but the elfin singer decided to sit down to a plate of carnitas , pork bits in corn tortillas.

“It’s interesting to watch him, no matter what he does,” said Marisella Morales, 20, of Oxnard.

Besides free counseling services, which can otherwise run as high as $100 a person, the applicants were eligible for a physical examination--a clean bill of health is required for amnesty--at a reduced rate. An Oxnard physician and several nurses camped out in the market’s bathroom, drawing blood samples and testing blood pressure.

Applicants began lining up behind the market an hour before the drive’s 8 a.m. opening.

In the midday heat, they inched through a line that ran the width of the market as volunteers fingerprinted them, checked their documentation for residency, translated birth certificates and accepted money orders of $185, the application fee.

Late in the afternoon, a female applicant buried her face in her hands in frustration. A 3-year-old boy whose mother waited to fill out an application burst into tears.

“He’s fed up,” the mother explained apologetically, noting that they had been in line for 5 1/2 hours.

One applicant, Juan Arrizon, 23, said that he came all the way from Los Angeles for the event, which he expected would be less hectic than similar events in more urban areas.

Proud applicant

Emilo Vasquez, a 26-year-old strawberry picker who has worked in this country since 1979, had already applied for amnesty and proudly displayed a piece of identification attesting to that.

But he returned to help register his bride, 20-year-old Irma Vasquez. Although she had been living in the United States only since 1984, she was able to apply for residency under the program for agricultural workers.

Others, however, weren’t as fortunate. Alicia and Agustin Dabaros, for instance, succeeded only in completing the paper work and obtaining a photograph and fingerprints. The housekeeper and unemployed landscaper from Fillmore didn’t have the application fee and wondered how they would come up with the $350 needed to apply jointly.

Their uncle, an orange picker from Fillmore, was in even worse shape. He had waited three hours in line only to learn that he did not have proper documentation for his claim that he has worked in the country since 1982.

Volunteers stopped accepting applications about 9 p.m., but worked for two more hours processing them, Hill said. The next day, they put in another seven hours counseling applicants.

Meanwhile, Hill said, the Oxnard office of the INS is considering staging at least one more drive in April. The location is still not determined, but he said it will probably be south of Santa Barbara, the site of one of the agency’s three other drives in the area.

“The closer we get to the deadline,” Hill said, “the harder it will be if we get hit by the crunch.”