Bill to Give Salvadorans Temporary Haven : Immigration: Criticized by some as special treatment, new law will allow them legal status for 18 months. But after that, there is a risk of deportation.

In less than two months, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans in California and throughout the country will suddenly be eligible to sign up for temporary safe haven as a new law that reverses years of U.S. policy goes into effect.

Under the landmark immigration bill passed by Congress last month, Salvadorans who are in the United States illegally and who have not been able to qualify for hard-to-get political asylum will, for the first time, be able to gain temporary legal status and avoid deportation. Also for the first time, they will be able to work legally.

The new legislation is being welcomed by immigrant advocates but challenged by critics who question whether Salvadorans should be given special treatment over people from other war-torn nations.

Nowhere will the law have a greater impact than in Los Angeles, home to the largest concentration of Salvadorans outside of San Salvador.

Scheduled to be signed by President Bush later this month, the law would go into effect Jan. 1 and last for 18 months--after which participants may again face deportation.

As the start date approaches, immigrant rights groups in Southern California are gearing up to promote the new program and educate refugees as to its advantages--and its risks.

“We expect to be overwhelmed,” said Madeline Janis, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Central American Refugee Center, which provides social services and legal aid to refugees. “We expect the whole nature of our work to change because of this.”

Janis’ organization and others are meeting weekly to train staff members and volunteers in the details of the program. Over the next few weeks, they plan public service announcements and other publicity, as well as workshops to teach applicants how to fill out the registration forms.

Agents for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who will administer the program, are also making preparations. Duke Austin, INS spokesman in Washington, warned that offering the new protection means putting additional strain on an already taxed agency with a huge backlog of other immigration cases.

In such places as Los Angeles, he said, expect long lines.

“It will be another burden, one that we will have to accomplish on a thinning resource,” Austin said. “I still think we can do a good job but . . . I’m sure there will be problems, delays.”

While exact numbers are hard to come by, an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Salvadorans are believed to be living in Southern California.

The safe haven provision is but one small part of the immigration bill, which increases the number of immigrants who will be admitted to the United States each year and puts a priority on highly skilled workers and natives of some European countries, such as Ireland. It also increases the number of visas to be granted to the close relatives of legalized residents.

But the safe haven element is noteworthy because it represents a reversal in decade-old U.S. policy. It singles out Salvadorans, whose home country is torn by war between leftist guerrillas and a U.S.-backed government and menaced by severe human rights abuses, as a people who deserve to be granted temporary refuge--something successive Republican administrations who support the Salvadoran government have resisted for years.

The bill offers an 18-month period of safe haven to Salvadorans who can prove their nationality and who can demonstrate they arrived in the United States before Sept. 19, 1990.

Applicants must sign up for the program between Jan. 1 and June 30 and will be charged a fee yet to be determined by the INS but not expected to exceed $50. Salvadorans who have been convicted of a felony or two misdemeanors are not eligible.

As part of their new legal recognition, eligible Salvadorans are to be given work permits that will allow them to emerge from what has been a largely underground existence. The permits must be renewed every six months for the 18-month period.

At the end of 18 months, the attorney general’s office can opt to extend the program if the civil war in El Salvador continues and if returning to the country poses a danger to refugees. Otherwise, Salvadorans in the program will be subject to deportation.

Some advocates find the program worrisome because Salvadorans will, in effect, be turning themselves over to the INS and could face deportation at the end of the 18 months; this may make many Salvadorans reluctant to apply. Another drawback, advocates say, is language in the bill that makes it very difficult to convert the temporary status into permanent permission to remain in the country.

“We want to be sure people understand what they are applying for,” said Linda Mitchell, spokeswoman for the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles. “It’s not an amnesty program. It’s not a legalization program. It’s a temporary safe haven program. It may not be for everyone.”

Nevertheless, Mitchell added, she expected Salvadorans to apply “left and right” for the new status because it offers something many see as golden: legitimate work papers.

Soon able to seek employment legally, many Salvadorans will be able to take better-paying jobs with benefits, Mitchell and others say. Until now, illegal Salvadorans often risked being exploited, forced to accept low-paying or abusive employment and undesirable housing.

“This is a tremendous victory and vindication for hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum, which ushered the bill through several legislative hearings in Washington.

Critics--among them Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.)--said the special protection for Salvadorans was unnecessary because the war in El Salvador has subsided and the number of political killings has declined. Moreover, making an exception for Salvadorans sets an unwanted precedent that undermines the tenets of immigration policy, critics argued.

“Once you start creating these kinds of preferential programs, other groups ask for similar treatment and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation of American Immigration Reform in Washington.

The safe haven provision “may warm the cockles of some senator’s heart,” Stein said, “but it’s another step down the road toward dismantling the whole basis of immigration policy.”

The temporary haven element of the bill was the work of Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass), who fought for years to move legislation through Congress that recognized the plight of Salvadorans. He won after an 11th-hour showdown with Simpson. Only when Moakley agreed to reduce the length of protection from three years to 18 months, and submitted to language in the bill that makes it difficult for a Salvadoran to convert temporary haven to permanent haven, did Simpson then accept the provision.