Those Denied Amnesty Are Urged to Appeal

Concerned that only a tiny fraction of eligible immigrants have appealed government denials of their amnesty applications, representatives of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor’s immigration project Tuesday urged applicants not to give up too easily and offered to help file their appeals.

“We believe many eligible applicants fail to appeal their denials because of lack of affordable legal services and lack of information about the appeal process,” said Teresa Sanchez, director of the federation’s Labor Immigrant Assistance Project.

Immigration and Naturalization Service statistics show that appeals have been filed by only about 8% of the more than 37,000 applicants denied amnesty so far under the first stage of the government’s massive amnesty program, Sanchez said. She blamed the low appeal rate on the INS, saying that the agency “has done little or no publicity” to alert applicants of their opportunity to appeal.

About 800,000 of the 1.1 million applications for temporary residency in the Los Angeles INS district have been approved. Those rejected now face the prospect of reverting to illegal alien status.