Amnesty Applicants Complain of Backlog

A month after registration ended in the historic legalization program for illegal aliens, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is buried in a mountain of complex paper work and many of the 1.6 million applicants face months-long waits before they learn whether they may live legally in this country.

With tough new penalties now in force against employers who hire illegal aliens, some alien applicants are complaining that they are being fired or refused work while they hang in limbo.

“This is a logistical nightmare,” said Raymond Penn, assistant commissioner for legalization at INS headquarters. “The easy part was getting the applications; now the hard part starts up.”

The one-year application period ended May 4 for immigrants who have lived illegally in this country since Jan. 1, 1982.

Backlog Develops

Because 250,000 of the applicants did not file until the final few days of the program, a staggering backlog of documents developed and the INS has had to schedule some follow-up interviews as far away as early next year.

Government regulations state that an INS receipt showing an alien has applied for temporary residency is sufficient to allow him to work legally until his case is determined.

However, this system is breaking down, immigrant advocate groups say.

Some applicants, like Rosa Ramos of New York, said that they never received an official receipt. Ramos, who applied for amnesty on April 28, said that her money order stub for the $185 application fee is all she has to prove that she has filed. Ramos, a Santo Domingo native, said the management of the restaurant where she works was skeptical and fired her.

“At this moment, I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I am tired of going to stores and saying I want to work. No one will hire me.”

Employers More Cautious

“It’s a crazy situation,” said Shirley Lung of the Center for Immigrants Rights in New York, citing the INS crackdown that began June 1 on employers who hire illegal aliens. Since companies that previously got warning citations now will be liable for fines, some are becoming overly cautious even with workers who have valid receipts, she said.

The confusion is “undercutting some of the benefits of the legalization program,” she said.

In Dallas, Vanna Slaughter of Catholic Charities said that many of the 3,000 applicants her group assisted have complained that they are being rejected for jobs because the receipt is “not a document that most employers are familiar with.”

INS officials said they do not believe the problem is widespread. At the INS center in Dallas, A.J. Irwin, acting chief legalization officer, said he knows of “a few isolated problems” with employers and that some have telephoned INS to ask about the meaning of the receipts.

However, INS officials acknowledge that the amnesty process is struggling under the massive paper work burden. In addition to issuing the receipts, agency workers are sorting through millions of pay stubs and other documents submitted that would show whether the alien had lived in this country for the required period of time.

Receipts ‘in the Mail’

Bill King Jr., director of the legalization program for the Western region, cited a “hell of a backlog” of applications that has now been whittled down. He said “most of these (application) fee receipts should be in the mail.”

Arthur Alvarez, assistant deputy district director in the legalization program there, said that if applicants “had a concern about having something in their hands, they would have applied earlier.”

Dallas, like many of the large legalization centers, has scheduled appointments into next year, leaving the applicants to worry until then whether they will qualify for legal residency. In Los Angeles, Alvarez said, the latest appointments are in December.

Rick Swartz, president of the National Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum, said: “On one hand the staggering of interview dates gives INS a break, but for the applicant it’s a delay on adjudication. People need to know.”

Both INS and outside groups had predicted that handling the last-minute surge of applications would be particularly difficult because it probably would contain a higher ratio of fraudulent documents and questionable applications. But INS officials now say that they doubt the overall denial rate will exceed 10%.

Predict More Denials

Some lawyers handling appeals of denials say they believe that the denials will go up because the agency was reluctant during the highly publicized application period to take a hard line.

“As soon as May 4 passed, we saw a dramatic increase in denials,” said Randye Retkin, director of Volunteers of Legal Service, a New York group. She said that in the previous 12 months, only six immigrants had contacted her office to appeal denials. Since the deadline, at least 35 have called seeking appeal help.

INS officials asserted that they will not use information gathered from applications submitted by rejected applicants to identify and deport illegal aliens--a tactic that is banned in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Said Penn: “Hopefully, these people will find that it’s not worth the effort to stay here in the United States and live in the conditions they had to live in, always looking behind their backs.”