Immigrants Assail Plan to Tighten Sponsorship Rules

For decades, it has been one of the perks of becoming a U.S. citizen: Take the oath of allegiance, then assume the role of sponsor for family members back home.

Up to now, it has been a perk with few strings attached. The sponsor’s basic job description: Sign a form and commit to a “moral obligation” to ensure that the sponsored immigrant will not go on welfare.

Now the very nature of immigrant sponsorship is being challenged, and Araceli Enriquez, 35, feels cheated.

The native of El Salvador, a waitress, became a citizen in February and thought that her sister might soon be able to join her in North Hollywood.

But under guidelines in proposed immigration bills now being considered in Congress, Enriquez doesn’t make enough money to sponsor her sister’s immigration. And even if she did, her sister might not have access to public health care.

A UCLA study released Monday estimates that 830,000 immigrants living in California, predominantly Latino women and children, would lose Medi-Cal health care benefits under the immigration changes being considered.

“First you have to make a lot of money to bring a person,” Enriquez said. “Then if you bring your family and they get sick, they can’t get Medi-Cal. In other words, they’re allowed to work, but they’re not allowed to get sick.”

One proposed change would require noncitizens to include the income of sponsors with their own in seeking eligibility for public health care benefits. That could boost the number of people without health insurance in California to 7.4 million, according to the UCLA study.

Having a sponsor in the United States is just about the only way the average working person from Guatemala, Hong Kong or Slovenia can hope to legally enter the country. Unless they have been persecuted politically or are skilled professionals, most people find that legal residency here is difficult to obtain. More than three-quarters of the 700,000 legal immigrants who enter the United States each year have sponsors, almost always relatives.

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One version of the legislation under consideration would require immigrant sponsors to earn at least 200% of the poverty level.

Immigration activists say that 46% of all U.S. citizens and legal residents would not be able to meet that proposed requirement.

For Enriquez, a married mother of two, the new requirements would mean that she and her husband, a bus driver, would have to earn about $36,440 annually--twice the poverty wage for a family of four. That’s significantly more than they bring home from their low-wage jobs.

“It’s a tremendous injustice because we’ve come here to work hard,” she said. “We’ve helped build this country, we’ve helped it advance. We’ve always paid our taxes, and we’ve done all that the law requires.”

Enriquez said that if her sister came here, she would not become a drain on taxpayers. She said Maria works in a store in El Salvador and could do the same job here, even if she doesn’t earn much more than her sister, an American citizen.

It has been five years since Enriquez has seen her sister, and she wants her children to know their Aunt Maria as more than a voice on the phone or a picture on the bookshelf in their North Hollywood home.

“She wants to be united with us,” Enriquez said. “We’ve always been a united family. I’ve told her that right now we can’t bring her.”

While immigrants with legal residency in the United States can apply to sponsor only spouses and unmarried children, U.S. citizens can apply to sponsor married children, parents and siblings.

Since most sponsors are family members trying to bring in relatives--a smaller number are employers trying to hire skilled foreign workers--activists say the proposed law is an assault on a decades-long policy encouraging family unification.

“It’s dividing the country by class and it’s sort of a backdoor way of slashing family immigration,” said Christopher Tan of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

But the bill’s proponents contend that it will tighten loopholes in existing laws that allow immigrants--both legal and illegal--to drain public services such as health benefits. The proposals would allow deportation of legal immigrants if they violate the new rules.

A spokesman for California Gov. Pete Wilson noted over the weekend that the governor believes that “there is a legitimate and serious concern in Congress and in the state about the sponsorship of immigrants and the lack of [financial] accountability on the part of sponsors when the immigrant arrives in this country.”

But Svjetlana Tepavcevic, 25, a political refugee from Bosnia, worries that the income requirements may mean that she will never be able to help her brother Nenad emigrate from Sarajevo. Tepavcevic, who plans to apply for U.S. citizenship, is a student at Santa Monica College.

“I’m going to school and that’s my biggest concern,” she said. “When you’re a student, you can’t really afford much.” And although she plans to transfer to UCLA and pursue a communications degree, she is not hopeful that things will improve. “I just assume that things will get worse. They’ll just add more requirements. I don’t think it’s guaranteed even if I become a citizen, which I plan to do.”

The proposed law also would create a new financial means test for Medi-Cal, the California version of the federal program providing health care for the poor, by requiring noncitizens to include the income of their sponsors along with their own in determining whether they qualify for the assistance.

Now, legal immigrants are treated just like citizens in qualifying for Medi-Cal or Medicaid.

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Such requirements would make it nearly impossible for German Caballero of Altadena to bring his 65-year-old mother, Ana Anastacia, here from Central America.

Caballero became a U.S. citizen in May. He works as a window washer; his wife works as a hotel housekeeper. They are on a tight budget--”in a good year we make $25,000 or $35,000,” he said--and can’t afford private health insurance for his four children. But because he is a property owner, the family does not qualify for Medi-Cal. If his mother came here, she wouldn’t be able to get sick, he said.

“That would be too much to pay,” he said.

For the time being, he said, his four children won’t be able to see their grandmother. “It’s easier for her to come here because our family here is too big” to travel to Central America, he said. Just the plane fare to San Salvador for his wife and four children could cost $4,000.

For others, the proposed law would only increase lingering fears about their immigration status.

Rachel Cometa, 27, an immigrant from the Philippines, has lived in the United States under a variety of visas for 12 years. Her current work visa will expire soon. She hopes that her mother, who has applied for U.S. citizenship, will be able to sponsor her application for permanent residency. But with the new law, she isn’t sure that things will work out.

“There’s all this waiting,” she said. “I’ve gone through this whole legal process and now everything can be pulled right out from under me.”