INS Extends Work Permits for 200,000 Salvadorans by 120 Days

The Immigration and Naturalization Service, overwhelmed by “an inordinately large group of applicants,” has announced that it will extend for 120 days the work authorizations of nearly 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants whose permits expire Tuesday.

Immigrant advocates supported the INS action. But they said they fear that thousands of Salvadorans in the United States who were granted temporary residency permits last year because of the civil war in their country still may lose their jobs Wednesday. Employers, unaware of the extension and fearing punitive measures for employing illegal immigrants, are likely to fire their Salvadoran workers, they said.

“Over the years employers have been trained to go by the expiration date on the work authorization card,” said Cathy Mahon, an attorney with the Central American Refugee Center, adding that the government fines employers who hire illegal immigrants. “The INS should be saying more aggressively: ‘Ignore the expiration on the card. They are legal.’ ”

The Justice Department said Friday that employers who fire Salvadoran workers with expired permits risk prosecution under the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

The INS said it has given employers sufficient notice of the extension. “We knew we did not have the ability to handle individually everyone whose work authorizations were running out in three weeks,” said INS spokesman Duke Austin in Washington. “I don’t know how you inform every employer in the world.”

The INS said it was prompted to issue the blanket extensions because of President Bush’s announcement last month that qualified registrants under the program could extend their legal right to work and stay in the United States until June 30, 1993. Bush was responding to a request from the Salvadoran government.

In the announcement published Friday in the Federal Register, INS Commissioner Gene McNary said the work permits will be automatically extended until Oct. 31, 1992, “to allow the service sufficient time to effect an orderly renewal of employment authorizations for this inordinately large group of applicants.”

More than 80,000 Salvadorans in the western region--most of whom live in the Los Angeles area--qualified for the right to live and work in the United States under the 18-month Temporary Protected Status program, which expires Tuesday. Without an extension, the process for deportation could begin the next day.

But even with the four-month extensions, some Salvadorans have been told their jobs are in jeopardy. Rosa Maria Alvarez, 26, was granted temporary residency last September. She said her employer told her two weeks ago that she will be fired after Tuesday if she cannot present an extended work permit.

“My manager said to me: ‘For me, it’s no problem, but if Immigration catches me, that’s a problem,’ ” Alvarez said. “It’s true, if you don’t have papers you can’t work here.”

Karen Miksch, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, said that employers with Salvadoran workers must be aware of the ruling. “It’s absolutely legal to keep them on and not violate employer sanctions,” she said. But “if the employer mistakenly thinks they’re undocumented and fires them, the employer has just violated employment discrimination laws.”