Judge to Extend Amnesty Deadline for 100,000 Aliens

In the latest court decision extending the amnesty program for certain groups of immigrants, a federal judge in Los Angeles has cleared the way for the legalization of tens of thousands of aliens--including large numbers of Asians, Europeans and South Americans--who re-entered the country with legal visas.

The ruling is specifically aimed at immigrants who were rejected or discouraged from applying for amnesty because of the Immigration and Naturalization Service rule that initially disqualified immigrants who traveled outside the country after the January, 1982, amnesty-eligibility deadline and re-entered with legal documentation.

Although the INS rescinded its policy mid-way through the one-year program, U.S. District Judge William D. Keller said Thursday that he will order the agency to extend the program to allow immigrants who may not have heard of the change to apply, according to lawyers on both sides of the case. Keller told the lawyers at a hearing on Wednesday that he planned to issue a formal order today.

While the use of legal visas to re-enter the country is widespread among Mexican immigrants, aliens from Europe, Africa, Asia and other faraway regions who must re-enter the country through U.S. ports of entry at airports invariably use them.

The ruling could add as many as 100,000 new amnesty applicants to the 1.8 million who applied before the first phase of the program ended on May 5, according to Peter Schey, the lawyer with the National Center for Immigrants Rights Inc. who filed the original lawsuit last summer.

“We believe that thousands of people never heard of the change in INS policy and therefore did not apply for amnesty by the May 4, 1988, deadline,” said Schey, who argued before the court that publicity of the policy change was inadequate.

Government attorneys, who disputed Schey’s numbers, said they may appeal Keller’s ruling.

The judge ruled that regardless of how well-publicized the change was, if this group of immigrants was denied the opportunity to gain amnesty because of an initially illegal policy, then they should be permitted to file late, Schey said.

Keller’s ruling extends the amnesty-application deadline for these immigrants to Nov. 30, 1988, coinciding with the end of a special legalization program for agricultural workers.

The case is one of several federal court challenges seeking similar extensions for different categories of immigrants who maintain they were wrongly left out of the process.

According to Schey, Keller’s ruling is particularly significant because it is the first since a Supreme Court decision in June that involved an extension of a deadline for naturalization for Filipino World War II veterans. That decision appeared to set a precedent against courts extending deadlines imposed by Congress. As a result, at least one court that had granted an amnesty extension is reconsidering its decision in light of the Supreme Court ruling, Schey said.

But in another related case, a federal judge in Sacramento on Wednesday reinstated an amnesty extension for immigrants who traveled outside the United States during the amnesty application period without INS permission. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton had stayed an extension he granted in June as a result of the Supreme Court ruling, Schey said.

“This court ruling says that despite that (Supreme Court) case, the federal courts do have the power to extend the deadline,” Schey said.

Government lawyers remain unconvinced, however. “The INS position is that the court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to order this extension,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. George Wu, who represented the INS in the case.

Wu also contested Schey’s estimate of the number of immigrants who might be affected by Keller’s ruling. When INS officials announced the change in their original policy last October, they estimated it might affect 100,000 immigrants. But many of them applied during the remaining seven months of the program, and therefore the number should be lower, Wu said.