INS Admits It Was Overly Strict on Farm Workers’ Paper Work

U.S. immigration officials admitted Thursday that they mistakenly imposed unreasonable burdens of proof on hundreds of farm workers who applied for amnesty in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Responding to complaints from community groups, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has begun notifying the affected applicants of the mistake, said Clifton Rogers, deputy district director for the INS here. Officials are sending letters to farm labor applicants--the number may top 1,000--scaling down earlier broad requests for documentation to demonstrate that they had worked as farm laborers for the 90-day period required under the law.

“We made a mistake, and we’re correcting it,” Rogers said.

Farm worker applicants must submit documentation proving that they worked with perishable crops for at least 90 days between May, 1985, and May, 1986. The legislation requires that farm workers submit “sufficient evidence” to demonstrate their employment “as a matter of just and reasonable inference.”

In the San Diego and Imperial county cases, the INS now admits, the paper work required exceeded that standard.

Among other things, INS letters sent to applicants in the two counties directed them to provide the names of every laborer who worked for their particular labor contractor during the 1985-1986 period, and exactly how many days they worked. In other cases, applicants were asked to provide notarized affidavits with the names of all purchasers of their employers’ produce during that one-year period, as well as the names of the sheds where the produce was packed.

Advocates complained that the requirements were unjust, and the INS now says it agrees.

The admission comes at a time when immigrant advocates throughout California have expressed concern that the INS is so focused on rooting out fraud in the farm worker amnesty program that officials are disqualifying legitimate applications and discouraging many other applicants.

“The position of the INS seems to be that anyone who waited this long to apply has got to be using fraud,” said Christine Brigagliano, an attorney with the California Rural Legal Aid Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, who staffs a hot line for complaints.