Amnesty’s End Means More Work for the INS

Although amnesty for immigrants ended at midnight Wednesday, 60 people hired for the San Gabriel Valley’s two Immigration and Naturalization Service offices are assured of their jobs well into the 1990s.

It will take up to five years for them to process the estimated 120,000 applications for citizenship that were filed in the El Monte and Pomona offices, officials said.

The employees, almost all hired on temporary status, will continue working in offices that were rented by the INS for the unprecedented program.

Agricultural workers have until Nov. 30 to apply for citizenship, and an additional 80,000 immigrants may be interviewed and eventually documented in the two offices.

On Thursday morning, just nine hours after the amnesty period ended, the offices began filling with immigrants who were well on their way to citizenship. More than 100 streamed into the office on Flair Drive in El Monte to be interviewed and to file additional documents, their next steps toward citizenship.

Thirty-two tired workers, who had been up past midnight and had not had a day off in almost two weeks, faced the task of opening and processing 5,294 packets containing applications that had been handed in Wednesday.

“They did a hell of a job,” said Mavis Salgado, supervisor of the El Monte office. “They stuck it out and here they are, back again. We try to make this look easy, but it has been very hard work.”

In the office on Holt Avenue in Pomona, 3,125 applications were filed on the final day. Helen Drum, acting legalization officer, said the Pomona office had 28 employees for the amnesty program and received about 53,000 applications.

Employees braved cold wind and long hours as they stood outside the El Monte office Wednesday night to collect last-minute applications.

Salgado resorted to inventive measures as the midnight deadline approached.

She said the office borrowed a canvas cart on wheels from the U.S. Postal Service and placed it outside, where INS workers deposited the applications.

“So many people didn’t trust the looks of a laundry cart, and they kept asking, ‘Is this really going to make it into the office?’ ” Salgado said. “So we had to cover it with (INS) posters.

“The workers kept filling up the cart and taking it upstairs on the elevator, dumped it in big boxes, and then took it down to fill again. Then they began taking the packets at the curb so the applicants wouldn’t have to pay for parking. In just the hour before 10:30 p.m. we received 747 packets.”

Fear of Deportation

The thousands of people who put off filing until the last day included many who had been afraid to disclose their illegal status until they learned from friends that they would not be deported if they filed applications.

Others said they had to wait until they could get enough money for the filing fees.

Maria Gil of Pico Rivera said she sold her car to cover the cost of applying. Her husband and three children are already citizens, she said, “and now I worry about not having a car. What am I going to do?”

Had to Sell Cows

Yahaira Peralta of Upland helped four members of her family with the applications, even though they are agricultural workers who have until Nov. 30 to file.

“They are afraid to wait too long,” she said. “They want to be sure to get their papers in on time. They had to sell their cows in Mexico to get enough money.”

Then there was Carmen Alva, 76, of Azusa, who has lived in the United States since she was 6 months old. She married a citizen and raised four children, but “just never got around to citizenship because I had so much to do. I was always busy.”

‘Opened Doors’

Almost all of the employees were recruited as temporary staff for the amnesty program by the INS, which advertised early last year for workers to fill positions ranging from clerks, who began at $12,000 a year, to legalization officers at $27,000.

Now that they have worked for a year, the employees qualify for permanent status in the INS if they pass a civil service examination, Salgado said.

“This is like amnesty for employees, because now they have a shot at being in the service,” she said. “This has opened a lot of doors. These are very, very good workers. All of them are outstanding.”

Clerk Rosslyn Gray said the job helped her learn to speak some Spanish, use computers, take photographs, develop patience “and find out that I’m doing something good. These (immigrants) are middle-class, hard-working people, and they are good people.”

Marco Rios, who switched to the INS from a job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said: “We’re here to help, and you get a kick out of that.”

“My staff has a great future,” Salgado said.