Amnesty Odyssey : Mom, Daughter Beat Clock in Mad Midnight Dash to File Papers

The clock was approaching midnight when Otilia Vaca, her daughter and her granddaughter burst through the door of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty office in San Diego. Soon, checks, dollars, receipts and other paper work were tossed from her bulging pocketbook onto the counter, along with lipstick, tissues and other miscellaneous items scooped from the depths.

“Is there time?” she asked, frantic, her hair mussed, as journalists and photographers closed in. “Is there time?”

There was time. Her daughter, Edith Maldonado, became one of the last people to apply for legal status in San Diego under the year-old amnesty program.

How did she feel when she walked in the door? “I felt I was going to faint,” Vaca said afterward, recovered somewhat from the odyssey that brought her from her Bay Area home in San Rafael, Calif., to the San Diego amnesty office just before the deadline.

By the time the clock struck midnight, the brisk crowds that had characterized the sterile amnesty office in recent days had dwindled, although many immigrants still mingled inside, filling out forms and compiling paper work. It wasn’t quite Times Square on New Year’s Eve, but a festive mood filled the room as the countdown to midnight progressed.

First Year of Program Closed

“The first year of amnesty is officially closed,” James Turnage, the immigration service’s district director in San Diego, announced at 12:15 a.m., amid scattered cheers.

Officials were pleased with the results, noting that about 80,000 applicants had signed up during the past year in the three amnesty offices in San Diego and Imperial counties, contrasted with earlier projections of only 52,500. Others, although happy for those who made it, expressed regret for the many who didn’t qualify, as well as for those who didn’t come forward--because of fear, lack of funds ($250 or so in various application costs) or other reasons.

But, for Otilia Vaca and her daughter, Edith Maldonado Lovato, 21, housecleaners in the Bay Area, there were only good feelings after an exasperating day. “I feel happy,” Maldonado said after submitting her application, holding her 15-month-old daughter, Lucia, a U.S. citizen by virtue of having been born in the United States.

Their time in San Diego, capped by the mad midnight dash to the amnesty center, had a Chaplinesque mix of drama and slapstick.

The threesome--grandmother, daughter and granddaughter--flew from San Francisco to San Diego on Tuesday with the intention of obtaining a letter from one of the Maldonados’ former employers attesting to Maldonado’s time in the United States. (Vaca is a legal resident.) They arrived late, and, in an attempt to economize, spent the evening in the Santa Fe railroad station, they said.

On Wednesday, as Vaca recounts it, they set out to find the employer, address in hand. A friend did the driving. They found the street, but could not find the house. The search ended about 9 p.m.

Then they tried to find the amnesty center. For three hours, they said, they drove around San Diego asking people where the office was. Again, the language barrier--the family speaks Spanish--complicated things. Again, no luck.

“We stopped at 7-Elevens, we stopped at the jail, we asked American people, we asked Mexican people--no one knew,” Vaca recalled, getting excited at the memory of those hours driving in circles. “We went to La Mesa, to El Cajon. We knew it was near a stadium somewhere. . . . I’m telling you, this was a tragedy.”

Finally, as the new day was about to break, they cruised by San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium and onto Mission Village Drive, where the amnesty office is located. They had made it--just.

“Forgive me, senora, “ a questioner had to ask after hearing the tale, “but why did you wait until the last day to apply?”

“ Pues ,” Vaca replied, using a catchall word that translates approximately as “Well,” “that’s just the way we are.”