Commentary : Amnesty’s Broad Sweep Is Missing Thousands of Uninformed Asians

A recent Amnesty Fair at Corbin Center in Santa Ana featured mariachis and Mexican fast-food and volunteers primed to help the undocumented get themselves documented. Three thousand people showed up to benefit from all this, one of whom was Asian.

Still, the number of Asians who need this help, in Orange County and the one just north, is literally uncountable. The most conservative estimate puts the number of undocumented Asians at 50,000 in Southern California; more liberal but still hardheaded estimates put the number at 250,000. The INS reports that 25,000 of these folk have applied for amnesty under provisions of the Immigration Reform Act. Even if they all qualify--which they won’t--there is left a large, silent minority of long-term Asian neighbors in limbo. They might have applied for amnesty but for one reason or 10 others they didn’t, and they are going to be left to twist in the wind after the May 4 deadline. They will be as unemployable and deportable as anyone else.

This late-breaking dilemma can comfortably be blamed on everybody. The Immigration and Naturalization Service admits a share in the burden of blame, and so do volunteer agencies. The amnesty thrust in Southern California has been directed at Latinos, almost to the exclusion of other immigrant groups, according to Evelyn Aguilar, an attorney with the Downtown (Los Angeles) Legalization Project. Aguilar, who is Filipino-American, says, “One Korean woman told me the other day she thought amnesty applied only to Mexicans.”

John Tu, western regional Asian outreach coordinator for INS, works seven days a week, along with one assistant. But they’ve been at it since November, which was late in the day for INS to begin a project of such complexity.

Outreach is agency lingo for getting the word out, and this is done mainly through the press. The Spanish-language press is fairly sophisticated, circulates through large communities and includes several radio stations and two television stations highly attentive to immigration news. According to both Tu and Aguilar, the Spanish press is identifiable and relatively easy to get at. “And it speaks one language,” says Aguilar.

The Asian press is quite a different thing. It either does not exist (if there’s a Fijian or Tongan paper I don’t know about it), or it exists in bewildering profusion (there are 27 Vietnamese newspapers in Orange County alone). It does not operate along familiar lines: “You send a news release to an Asian editor,” says Roy Nakano, an attorney with Legal Aid Society, “and he expects to be paid to print it.” (Thus, a proclamation from Harold Ezell had better have a check attached.) And it does not speak with a single tongue.

Most volunteer groups are delighted if they can handle two or three Asian languages; the INS recognizes Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Tagalog. This under-reaches the necessary outreach by a dozen languages and a score of sub-dialects spoken in clustered neighborhoods throughout Southern California. The total is guessed at 27.

If the term Asian really applied to Asia there would be hundreds more. But in immigration usage, Asian concerns more precisely the Orient and the scatter of island-states that decorate the western Pacific. Their immigrants represent 18 nationalities. Aside from the obvious--Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong--they include:

Filipinos, who may not realize that independence made them foreigners; Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese unprotected by the federal refugee umbrella; Thais, Burmese, Malaysians and Indonesians; a surprising number of mainland Chinese; emigrants from Tonga, Fiji, Singapore, Western Samoa, and people from the Pacific Trust Territories.

All these “Asians” in their wild variety have enriched our corner of the country. Communicating with them would challenge an academy of scholars. The squishy estimate of 50,000 to 250,000 undocumented Asians implies little authoritative contact. Authority, in fact, is what many of them came here to escape.

This reluctance can be overcome, but it takes more effort than immigration officials have been able to give it, according to Stewart Kwoh, director of Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. Speaking before Congress two weeks ago, he cited confusion, fright and lack of information among Asians. Kwoh used the Asian dilemma as a strong argument for a year’s extension of the May 4 amnesty deadline.

To be eligible for amnesty, a person must have been in the country illegally before January, 1982. John Tu of INS says many Asians who entered the United States on visas kept them in force past that pivotal date but later allowed them to lapse. They thus suffered the fatal stigma of having been legal at some point during the past six years and therefore ineligible to apply for amnesty. “Or they’ve just renewed their visas, figuring the process was automatic,” Tu said. “They don’t realize we can cancel them anytime.”

Another barrier to documentation may lie in the special nature of the Asian work force. The Asian immigrant is far less likely than the Latino to enter the general labor force. The young Latino puts himself on the market right away; the Asian is more apt to open a shop or go to work for relatives or friends.

Working for an uncle, the young Asian may feel he has no need for the green card required by INS. He may feel confident his kinfolk can ignore the employer sanctions imposed by INS. He may feel safe, and he is. Until the next immigration sweep.