Amnesty Office Shuts; Program Near End

In May 1987, there were balloons, confetti, official proclamations, upbeat speeches and giveaways of cake and soft drinks to mark the inauguration of a U.S. immigration amnesty office along Mission Village Drive in San Diego.

On Friday, the place had a half-deserted look and staffers wondered aloud about how to pack up boxes of official forms, drab furniture, musty archives and other material.

Almost 3 1/2 years and more than 52,000 successful applications after its much-publicized debut, the San Diego office served its last client Friday, its anticlimactic closing an outgrowth of budget reductions, a diminishing caseload and neighborhood complaints.

Shortly before 3 p.m, the doors closed, the computers went down and amnesty applicants were being told to come back next week--to the Escondido office, where the center’s paperwork is being transferred.

“I guess I’ll have to try to find a ride up there,” said Luisa Gonzalez, an applicant awaiting permanent legal status. She was among those shut out when the doors were locked in mid-afternoon, although the office reopened later and was not officially closed until 4:30 p.m.

The shutdown of the San Diego amnesty office is the latest in a series of closures nationwide of sites that were opened in mid-1987 to handle the anticipated glut of applications from foreign nationals eligible under the new program. Congress created the amnesty initiative as part of the sweeping 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Eventually, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the amnesty, or legalization, program resulted in granting temporary legal status, the first step toward permanent residency, to some 3.1 million foreigners, more than half of them residents of California. Most were citizens of Mexico, although residents of dozens of nations benefited.

The great majority of the 3.1 million are ultimately expected to achieve permanent legal U.S. residence, which grants beneficiaries the right to work in the United States and can lead to citizenship.

But why shut down the amnesty office in San Diego and retain the Escondido site?

Budget restraints mandated that one of San Diego County’s two amnesty centers had to close, according to Vicki Quainton, the INS deputy district director in San Diego. Authorities targeted the city office, she says, primarily because most of the region’s remaining amnesty caseload involves farm laborers who most likely live closer to Escondido. All San Diego files are being sent to Escondido, to ensure continuity, Quainton said.

“Our workload is mostly agricultural, so it made sense to keep open the office that serves most of that population,” Quainton explained. “But no one is being left out in the cold.”

Also figuring in the decision, Quainton acknowledges, were the office’s high costs--rent was about $18,400 a month, compared with $14,500 in Escondido--and the many complaints from neighborhood residents annoyed by the traffic, clutter or crowding associated with the amnesty office. (Because of the complaints, Quainton says, the INS spent $3,000 a month for security guards at the San Diego site and $500 a month for additional trash collection.)

From the outset, however, the amnesty office shutdowns were an inevitable result of the process.

The amnesty offices were created with the explicit expectation that all would ultimately be closed as amnesty beneficiaries attained permanent legal residence status and their need for contact with the INS diminished. The Escondido office and other amnesty sites nationwide are scheduled to close March 31.

And, as the amnesty effort winds down, the application fees that have funded it are also diminishing, thus adding some urgency to the need to close the offices and reduce staff. (The San Diego-area amnesty staff has been pared from a high of 119 to 24, according to the INS.)

“One of the things that Congress was adamant about was that no taxpayer dollars be expended on this program,” noted Virginia Kice, an INS spokeswoman in Los Angeles, who said the fees imposed on applicants had thus far met the program’s operating expenses. “If we’re going to meet that mandate, it’s going to be necessary for us to close offices.”

While Luisa Gonzalez and others were clearly not happy about the inconvenience of having to schlep up to Escondido, 40 miles to the north, all agreed that maintaining and extending their cherished micas-- legal U.S. residence documents--would be worth the effort.

“As long as I get my papers, I don’t care if they told me that I had to go to Canada,” said Gadier Uriarte, a 30-year-old citizen of Mexico who now works in a San Diego supermarket. “We’ll go anywhere for the papers.”

Added Luis Galicia, a 45-year-old Mexican man, “I’ll go wherever they send me.”

In practice, the benefits of amnesty have been extended to two broad groups--some 1.8 million so-called “general amnesty” applicants, who had to prove that they had been living the United States illegally since 1982; and 1.3 million agricultural laborers who were had to demonstrate that they had performed at least 90 days of field work in the United States during 1985-86.

Most beneficiaries granted temporary legal status under the general amnesty program have already applied for permanent residence status in the United States; most farm-worker applicants are still in the temporary-residence stage.

Predictably, the busiest amnesty offices nationwide were all in the Los Angeles area: The East Los Angeles site granted temporary legal residence to 122,000 applicants; an additional 92,000 were processed in the El Monte site and 90,000 successfully filed their applications in Huntington Park.

At the San Diego office, the 52,000 applicants granted temporary residence included 27,000 general amnesty-seekers and 25,000 agricultural workers. Escondido has serviced some 45,000 applicants, the great majority of whom--more than 35,000--were agricultural laborers.