There’s Pride in Amnesty Office: ‘We Made It!’

In the crush of paper work leading to Wednesday’s federal amnesty deadline, immigration worker Susan Kim toiled through a succession of 12- and 14-hour days, juggling cultural problems of great sensitivity.

One was the fear among some Asians to apply--a problem that kept her going to community meetings, talking with Asian-language newspapers and answering the government’s Amnesty Hotline to allay fears of deportation, Kim said.

A second problem, a little closer to home, was her husband.

“He’s a traditional Korean man . . . he cannot accept the long hours,” Kim, 32, mother of three children, said Wednesday amid hundreds of amnesty applicants crowded into the Hollywood legalization office. “At a certain point in the middle of this, he almost made me quit my job.”

Although many federal workers have quit in recent months, some citing burnout from the arduous hours, others like Kim kept at it and professed no regrets as tens of thousands of last-day forms poured into the 16 offices serving the seven-county Los Angeles district.

After months of handing out forms, solving computer glitches and preparing the elaborate machinery of benevolence, about 350 amnesty workers in the nation’s busiest district seemed to be weathering the final deluge of applications, fingerprints, checks and photos with no small measure of pride.

Although some had worked until midnight Tuesday, they were at their desks as early as 7 a.m. on Wednesday, preparing for shifts that would extend, in some cases, well past midnight again. The 350 employees represented a sharp drop from the 450 workers originally hired, Pyeatt said.

“They’ve been putting in straight hours; we haven’t had any split shifts,” said Anita Maker, manager of the East Los Angeles office, who smiled nonetheless. “Sore feet, aching backs . . . we’ve had everything.”

Dorita Kimble, 37, a deputy immigration supervisor for the district, said she has been averaging more than 12 hours a day, six days a week, for months. But as she surveyed the festive Hollywood office--decorated with balloons and banners--she called it exciting.

” I think the adrenaline is flowing right now,” Kimble said. “It’s rewarding to know I’ve assisted in a program that’s helped a lot of people come out of the shadows. When you’re doing something that’s personally rewarding, what is time?”

Finally Done

Still, there is a 6-year-old at home. “I will say, I’m glad May 4 is today,” Kimble added. “We made it!”

Applications received by Wednesday now enter an elaborate processing system that will operate for months. Away from the front counters, where applicants lined up like movie-goers, employees assigned file numbers to completed applications and entered the names and numbers into banks of computer terminals.

For each name, computers automatically assigned an interview appointment for coming weeks and printed that date on a card. Those cards are now being mailed out.

Temporary Permits

Applicants will next visit the legalization offices for interviews and will receive a six-month temporary work permit, which gives them legal status while more paper work is processed.

Meanwhile, their files are traveling to Kentucky for entry into a nationwide data bank. Then they will return to a regional processing center in Laguna Niguel, where officials will decide whether to issue an 18-month temporary residence permit.

After 18 months, Pyeatt said, the applicant may start all over, applying for a permanent residence permit. Five years after that, he may apply for citizenship.