Differences Are Starkly Evident Between Ezell, Successor at INS

Ben Davidian may be as much of a Republican Party loyalist as his predecessor, but that’s where the similarity ends between him and the man he replaced as the top immigration official in the West, the colorful Harold Ezell.

Davidian isn’t going to sing in public as Ezell did.

He’s not going to dance with Imelda Marcos or anyone else who might be controversial or under public scrutiny.

When asked if he had a sombrero, Davidian--mindful that Ezell, a Laguna Hills resident, occasionally donned one--nervously chuckled and eyed the questioner’s tape recorder. “Shut that thing off,” he joked.

Indeed, Davidian, 38, quickly showed in his first week on the job as the new Western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he will be a different sort of public servant than the 52-year-old Ezell.

“You could immediately tell a difference,” said one INS staffer, who was surprised to find Davidian at his desk for an unannounced introduction shortly after the new commissioner reported to work. “Ezell was a little loosy goosy--I guess that’s how he got into trouble. Davidian was friendly and all that, but I got the sense he isn’t going to say weird things. He has his guard up.”

Staffers still shake their heads at one Ezell classic, which caused Latino activists to call for his dismissal. Describing a streamlined screening process for aliens at the border, Ezell said in 1986: “If you catch ‘em, you ought to clean ‘em and fry ‘em yourself.”

In an informal chat at the INS regional headquarters in Laguna Niguel, Davidian said he will have a different approach.

“I’ll be a lower profile,” said the former chairman of the California Agriculture Labor Relations Board. “I’ll probably do most of my management here in this building and in the other (INS) offices.”

Davidian declined to be drawn into a discussion on immigration policy issues or his personal views on such volatile subjects as amnesty or the controversial INS roundups of illegal immigrants on the streets where they congregate to ask for work.

He said he preferred to wait until attorney Gene McNary, the elected chief executive officer of St. Louis County, Mo., is confirmed as the new INS commissioner. McNary was nominated earlier this month to succeed Alan Nelson.

So, the conversation centered on his background, his 2 1/2 years as chairman of the ALRB and, to an extent, his predecessor.

On the last count, he was quick to praise Ezell.

“Commissioner Ezell did a pretty darn good job here,” Davidian said, noting that Ezell has been personally credited with persuading many illegals to sign up for amnesty under the initial phase of the 1986 immigration reform law. About 60% of the 3 million who applied came from the INS Western Region of California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam.

“He was faced with the most sweeping change in immigration law in the history of this country,” Davidian continued. “It required a whole policy . . . the biggest task being going out there and getting people to sign up.

“In the process, he became high profile.”

But Davidian would not reply directly when asked if he might scrap his low-key style to ensure that all of the 1.8 million aliens who signed up in the West complete the amnesty program’s Phase II requirements of knowledge of English and U.S. history. “That’s one of the highest priorities of this agency,” he said.

On other topics, Davidian:

* Said he planned no wholesale changes within the agency’s ranks, but he emphatically reminded INS employees that it is not solely an enforcer of the nation’s immigration laws. “We are also a service agency,” he said. “People can’t go around waiting years for the greatest prize that this country can bestow on someone, citizenship, only to be treated rudely by someone at a front counter. That just isn’t acceptable.”

* Asked INS critics, who charge that the agency is anti-Latino, not to be too harsh. “Give us a chance,” he said. “Give us a little time. I don’t think it’s as negative as it used to be. If there’s a negative image, it’s getting better. You can’t be an enforcement agency and please everybody. You can’t do that. All you can do is to carry out the law within the policies of the Bush Administration as fairly and appropriately as we can. And every now and then, somebody’s going to be upset about it.”

Rejected the suggestion from critics of his tenure as ALRB chairman that he had no appreciation for farm workers. “That is hot and dusty work,” he said, recalling a summer of picking pears in Apple Valley as a youth. “And when I was able to do something else, I did something else. I’m not going to try and tell you that I have a lot of experience in the fields, but my short experience tells me that’s a damn hard way to make a living.”

Davidian, a lawyer by training who spent four years as a flight navigator in the Air Force, grew particularly testy when he was reminded of charges by ranking officials of the United Farm Workers of America that he was pro-grower since he was appointed to the ALRB in 1987.

“I’m not concerned if Dolores Huerta (UFW co-founder and first vice president) thinks that I’m anti-Latino because she is wrong,” he said. “I read someplace where someone said that 97% of my decisions was pro-grower. That’s absolute foolishness. If you read them, the majority of my decisions were rendered for the farm workers. A lot of growers were mad after a case went against them and they called the governor’s office.

“And some of the angriest recommended me in letters to the White House for this job. They told me, ‘We’ve come to view you as a fair man.’ ”

A UFW spokesman said that the ALRB under Davidian investigated fewer complaints filed by the union than previously. “He can say all he wants, but the fact is farm workers are not better off today because of Mr. Davidian and his pals in the Deukmejian Administration.”

Praised by Some

In his first week, Davidian was praised by some INS executives as a quick study who knows more about immigration issues than he lets on. “He’s asked some very probing questions,” one agency executive said.

A native of Fresno who won his political stripes on the campaigns of prominent GOP stars, including former President Ronald Reagan, President Bush and California Gov. George Deukmejian, Davidian cuts a different physical presence than Ezell. While the stout, older Ezell used his hands and arms to punctuate a conversation, the erect Davidian seemed less gregarious, according to INS employees who met him last week.

“He didn’t strike me as the type you’d invite out for a beer,” one staffer said. Then he amended his thoughts: “Well, maybe we should.”