He Helps Others but Fails in His Own Bid for Amnesty

Juan Hernandez didn’t make it. For several hours Wednesday night, as the amnesty applicants swirled around him, the 32-year-old native of Mexico paced the sidewalk in front of the downtown Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, desperately selling large envelopes at 50 cents each to those needing them to deposit their applications.

But business was not brisk enough. Just before the midnight deadline, the unemployed laborer had sold 200 envelopes and made $100--which was $85 short of what he needed to file his own application for legalization.

“I helped them, but not myself,” he said, looking at the dwindling crowd with a resigned sigh.

Write on Any Surface

Thousands of other last-minute applicants who jammed INS offices in the final hours before the midnight deadline were luckier, eagerly depositing their money orders and applications in plastic bins which promised a chance at legal residency. The immigrants were using any surface that would support a sheet of paper--gumball machines, snack tables, stairs, each other’s backs, the floor--to complete applications.

As the minutes trickled away, INS workers were inundated by last-minute questions from confused immigrants: “Are you sure? Are you sure?” an applicant repeatedly asked Anita Maker, who heads the East Los Angeles office. “If I come in tomorrow, will you accept my application?”

Maker assured him that she would because he was an agricultural worker, and those workers have until Nov. 30 to apply. Still, the man hung around for several minutes, not quite convinced that he shouldn’t try to complete the form then and there.

For Ricardo Gutierrez, 27, completing the amnesty application was “a moment that can change my life.” He has two daughters living with in-laws in Guanajuato, Mexico. But Guanajuato, he said, “is just like the song--’La Vida No Vale Nada En Guanajuato (Life Is Worth Nothing In Guanajuato)’.”

And why didn’t he apply earlier? “I didn’t trust them,” he said of the INS. “And they didn’t trust me.”

Kisses Application

One 49-year-old man stood at the doorway and kissed the envelope containing his application before turning it over.

Thousands of miles and several time zones away, the Hawaii INS office in Honolulu accepted the last application in the historic yearlong program. As the midnight hour approached there, everything seemed to be in place--except an alien.

Unlike Los Angeles, where several dozen applicants rushed in at midnight, no one entered the office in the last minutes, even though a staffer went outside occasionally to ask passers-by if they wanted to apply. Chief legalization officer Pam LeGates tried again. “All right, everybody who’s going to apply for amnesty line up . . . and I mean now!”

“Who’ve we got?” someone whispered anxiously.

“They’ve got one saved,” a bystander confided.

Dragged Before Cameras

Sione Feiloakitau, a Tongan fisherman who had been sitting in the waiting area for a good half-hour--even though there appeared to be no wait--was dragged before the TV cameras.

Immigration officials wearing Hawaiian leis over their business suits and leafy crowns on their heads thrust a miniature Statue of Liberty into Feiloakitau’s hands.

“Better late than never,” one quipped.

Feiloakitau, 42, said through an interpreter that “no words can express my appreciation and my happiness at becoming an American . . . a legal alien.”

Someone asked why he had waited until the last minute to apply.

A Tongan interpreter had a hasty conversation with Feiloakitau.

The interpreter explained: “He was gone fishing.”

Staff writer Tamara Jones in Honolulu contributed to this story.