INS to Randomly Check Quake Aid Applicants

Under congressional pressure to strongly enforce a ban on non-emergency earthquake benefits for illegal immigrants, the Clinton Administration is directing the Immigration and Naturalization Service to conduct random checks of recipients of longer-term aid, officials said Friday.

As part of the new policy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will require those seeking to extend their housing assistance beyond 90 days to declare that they are in the country lawfully and show proof of identification, spokesman Phil Cogan said. Applicants will be told that the INS will follow up with spot reviews of individuals’ assertions that they were here legally at the time of the Northridge quake.

“The exact procedure that the INS will follow hasn’t been worked out but the declarations of the applicants will be audited,” said Phil Cogan, a FEMA spokesman.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency initially proposed a policy that would have required those seeking longer-term aid to simply declare their residency status without providing documents. But FEMA was urged by some lawmakers to adopt stronger measures and the new policy was worked out by four key members of Congress on Thursday.

The new policy will have no effect on any recipient of aid that covers a period of less than 90 days. It is uncertain whether the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Small Business Administration, which are also distributing earthquake benefits, will adopt FEMA’s policy.

Immigration advocates maintain that there is no evidence that significant numbers of undocumented residents are seeking such benefits and that simple declaration would be sufficient. The proposal to institute INS checks was immediately decried by one prominent immigration attorney.

“This is going to send a strong, chilling message through the community that if you apply for benefits, you’re going to be turned over to the INS on a random basis,” said Charles H. Wheeler of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. “It’s a rather sharp departure from protections that currently exist in federal law.”

But another advocate, Cecelia Munoz, senior immigration policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza, took a wait-and-see attitude.

“A lot depends on what the procedures are and what’s being audited,” Munoz said. “Having the INS audit FEMA and the process that FEMA uses can be done in a way that will not scare the daylights out of people who are legitimately seeking services for which they are eligible. We will carefully monitor the implementation to make sure no discrimination results.”

As part of the $8.6-billion disaster spending bill, relief agencies were required to take reasonable steps to ensure that no undocumented residents receive assistance beyond 90 days after the Jan. 17 temblor.

Buffeted by conflicting congressional pressures, the Administration has been grappling with the politically volatile task of implementing the prohibition during the five weeks since the measure was adopted. FEMA, the lead federal disaster agency, has been at the forefront.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who negotiated the reasonable steps provision, had told FEMA that relying solely on applicants’ declarations would be insufficient.

“It is my belief that FEMA should not be relying solely on the honor system, nor should it base its procedure entirely on an empty warning against making false statements,” Feinstein wrote to FEMA Director James Lee Witt on March 1.

“Without further safeguards (e.g., requiring presentation of documentation or implementing follow-up enforcement efforts), I believe that the proposed FEMA process will provide much too little deterrent to be effective.”

FEMA has provided temporary housing assistance of two months for displaced renters and three months for homeowners. But it can extend the aid for up to 18 months to those who are unable to re-establish themselves on their own. The new policy of proof of identity and INS spot-checks will apply to anyone who applies for an extension.

At the same time, HUD is providing 18-month rental subsidies to low-income quake victims. The agency has been using the honor system in taking applications for its program. The application states that declaration of residency status is made under the penalty of perjury.

The FEMA policy was a compromise reached by Feinstein, Reid, and Reps. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) and Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City). Dixon and Berman are considered immigrant advocates. Neither could be reached for comment Friday.

An immigration rights activist who is familiar with the deliberations said that the alternatives were less desirable and would have created the potential for widespread discrimination.

Under the policy, applicants seeking to extend their temporary housing will be required to show a form of identification, which is intended to deter fraud. FEMA has defined this as a driver’s license, student identification card, employer identification card, health insurance card or any acceptable document that confirms one’s identify.

Making a false declaration about residency will be punishable by a fine or imprisonment.

Cogan said FEMA attorneys were finalizing the policy Friday evening.

“We’re in the process of implementing it as soon as it can be done in an orderly fashion,” he said. “We’ve already been in touch with our people in California.”

Meanwhile, HUD has changed its policy that required all members of a household to be legal citizens before granting long-term housing aid.

In a March 16 letter to the Los Angeles Housing Authority, a HUD official said that, contrary to earlier directives, all adult members of a household no longer have to certify that they are in the United States legally. Rather, wrote Madeline Hastings, director of HUD’s Rental Housing Division, only the applicants for long-term housing “shall certify that they are United States citizens or otherwise lawfully in the United States.”

Hastings instructed all local public housing administrators to “take steps to identify any applicant (who) may have been denied assistance since Feb. 25 as a result of earlier communications and reconsider that applicant for assistance if the applicant for assistance certifies his/her lawful status.”

It was not known how many families were denied housing on this basis.

HUD’s earlier decision to require all adult members of households to certify that they were legal residents had generated intense concern among immigration attorneys.

They noted that HUD is under a preliminary injunction against disqualifying applicants from its housing programs when some members of a family are citizens and others are not. This arose from a 1986 class-action lawsuit that charged that such a policy violated the constitutional right to free association.