Amnesty Advocates Assail INS : Immigration: Slow handling of agricultural worker applicants could lead to their deportation, activists say. Staffers deny the charges.

Immigrant rights advocates charged Thursday that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is so ineffective in handling amnesty applications under an agricultural workers program that an estimated 250,000 requests from Southern California may not be processed by a Dec. 1 deadline.

The advocates charged that the tardiness in handling many applications under the Special Agricultural Worker program--many of them filed two and three years ago--could lead to the deportation of some alien applicants.

That assertion was denied by INS officials, who insist that regardless of any deadline, no one can be deported until his application is rejected and all appeals exhausted.

Nevertheless, the advocates at a Los Angeles news conference insisted the INS has badly mismanaged the program by abandoning its posture of processing amnesty applications quickly. They contended that the INS was in the process of closing some local amnesty offices and shifting personnel to other duties.

“This is just part of the basic insincerity and bad faith that the INS has shown throughout the amnesty process,” said lawyer Teresa Sanchez-Gordon, director of the Labor Immigrant Assistance Project in Los Angeles.

The activists were particularly incensed at the immigration service’s failure to publicize the Dec. 1 deadline and other aspects of the agricultural workers program.

“I guess we’ll have to start doing the INS’ job,” said attorney Susan Alba.

The representatives of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles used the news conference to announce a public relations campaign to advise agricultural worker applicants about the deadline. They cautioned applicants not to believe they are deportable merely because the INS has not acted on their application by Dec. 1.

Under the program, aliens who could prove they were agricultural workers for at least 90 days between May 5, 1985, and May 4, 1986, were eligible to apply for amnesty. Applicants under this program were not required to provide as many documents to prove eligibility as those with the general amnesty program, which drew about 3.1 million applications nationwide.

An estimated 1.2 million persons applied under the agricultural workers program, which was designed to provide an ample supply of workers in rural areas chronically plagued by labor shortages. Nearly 800,000 of the program applicants live in California and three other Western states.

Dona Coultice, director of the INS’ legalization effort in the West, said the agricultural workers program has been the agency’s top priority since July. While admitting that not all applicants would be processed by Dec. 1, she said INS staffers were performing admirably, approving applications at a rate of 100 a day.

She said some delays were being caused by INS staffers being forced to thoroughly review questionable applications that may need more documents to prove eligibility.

“Our record of accomplishments speak for themselves,” Coultice said, pointing out that the INS staffers in Laguna Niguel have approved more than half of the nearly 800,000 applications filed in the West.

She rejected the assertion by critics that any delay beyond Dec. 1 for program applicants could mean deportation. “They don’t lose anything if Dec. 1 comes and goes and nothing happens,” she said.