Immigrants Take Plea for Education Funds to State Capital

Though they still have difficulty understanding English, about 175 Spanish-speaking immigrants showed Thursday that there has been a payoff to the civics classes they are taking to qualify for the U.S. amnesty program.

Displaying political instincts that have worked for waves of immigrant groups before them, the would-be citizens from northern and southern regions of the state showed up in the capital to demonstrate, meet the press, picket a state agency and hear speeches from elected officials.

The purpose of the political activity was to increase pressure on the Legislature to pass a bill that would appropriate an additional $50 million to enable the immigrants to continue attending basic English and civics classes.

Many of the immigrants are required to receive at least 40 hours of such instruction to qualify for permanent residency under the amnesty program. If they do not meet the requirements for residency, they could face deportation.

But educators say most of the immigrants, many of whom cannot even read or write in their native languages, need on average at least 300 hours of classroom instruction to be able to do such things as qualify for job training programs and pass the U.S. citizenship test.

With 1.6 million people applying for the amnesty program in California and 350,000 now attending classes, meeting these needs is expensive. The basic education program was budgeted for $100 million this year, but state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said it will take the extra $50 million to finish out the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

All the money comes from the federal government under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The bill appropriating the extra money would draw the funds from appropriations planned for use in future years.

The bill, awaiting action in the Senate Appropriations Committee, is not likely to be heard until early next month.

Arnoldo Torres, who organized Thursday’s lobbying effort, said at a press conference that by delaying action on the bill the Legislature is “putting into serious jeopardy the legal status of hundreds of thousands of persons.”

Torres said the demonstrators came to Sacramento in three buses in a show of force meant both to put pressure on the Legislature and to show the serious intentions of the immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

But the demonstration also underscored the immigrants’ fears of being pitted against Soviet Jews and health organizations in the battle for scarce federal dollars.

Democrats in Congress have made efforts to shift $200 million from the amnesty program to programs specifically for Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union. The 1986 amnesty program only applies to immigrants who were already living in the United States before 1982, or agricultural workers living here before 1986.

The Deukmejian Administration, meanwhile, has allocated the bulk of state’s share of Immigration Reform and Control Act money to health and welfare programs and now says that there is not enough for extra funding for immigrant education.

Bert Corona, a Latino activist from the San Fernando Valley who joined Torres and the others in the lobbying effort, charged that state officials may also be motivated to hold up education funds because they have an interest in maintaining an illiterate group of workers who are not citizens.

“Maybe we are paranoid, but we feel that they want us with permanent residence cards so that we can provide cheap labor,” Corona said. “The growers want cheap labor, other industries that use undocumenteds want cheap labor. Spanish-speaking-only people are highly desirable in low-paying jobs. . . . They work hard and ask no questions.”

Torres said busloads of immigrants will again travel to Sacramento in two weeks to confront legislators after they return from the Easter recess.