INS Insists New Law Won’t Spur Deportations

Responding to widespread confusion and fear, the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Wednesday tried to assure immigrants that the complex and tough reform law that takes effect Tuesday will not produce mass deportations.

Deputy Commissioner Chris Sale assured reporters that the new law was not intended to trigger large-scale deportations. “We have no intention of making mass sweeps or going into communities,” Associate Commissioner Paul Virtue added. “That will not, in fact, happen.”

Some immigrant communities have panicked over what is widely perceived as a Tuesday deadline to try to change their legal status in some way. There have been reports of rushed marriages performed in the mistaken belief that spouses will gain automatic status as legal immigrants.

“There is no reason to go out and get married by April 1,” Virtue said. “The law has not changed in that regard.” Neither before nor after that date, he explained, is a spouse entitled to automatic permanent residence in the United States.

The specter of dramatic changes in the law, passed by Congress last year and signed by President Clinton in September, has sent a shudder through immigrant communities from New York to Miami to Los Angeles.

Two major changes that go into effect Tuesday could make it easier to expel illegal immigrants and prevent their return for many years, as well as halting more unlawful immigrants at the border or other ports of entry.

Under the new law, illegal immigrants who leave the United States after staying here more than six months after Tuesday will be denied reentry, even if they otherwise qualify for a visa, for three years. If they leave and attempt reentry after living in the United States illegally for more than a year, they will be barred for 10 years.

For California, with its huge population of illegal immigrants, this is one of the bill’s most dramatic provisions. There are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in line in the United States waiting for “green cards,” usually via petitions by close relatives. Waits of four years or more are common.

Many will have to choose after Tuesday whether to remain here illegally--and face being barred from the United States for a long period--or return to their homelands and wait for their visa number to turn up. However, most can put off the decision until Sept. 30, since the bars in the new law will not become effective until then.

In a second significant provision, immigration officers at borders and airports will have new authority beginning Tuesday to decide on their own to reject illegal immigrants and send them home immediately without a review by superior officers or the courts. The only exception would be cases in which rejected applicants plead the need for political asylum because of persecution in their homelands. If that happens, immigration inspectors must turn the cases over to asylum officers.

The ethnic press, especially the Spanish-language media, has been reporting daily on the complex revisions.

“People are reacting with incredible anxiety, anguish and fear,” noted Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of One Stop Immigration, a private social service agency in heavily immigrant East Los Angeles.

But there has been widespread confusion and misinformation.

Some immigrants have believed mistakenly that they must marry a legal resident by Tuesday to avoid deportation or must file green card applications by that date. Others worry that large-scale INS sweeps will begin next week in the bustling immigrant neighborhoods of Southern California, the nation’s principal new-immigrant magnet.

“This has people in a state of incredible nervousness and apprehension,” said Gutierrez, whose office’s telephone lines have been jammed.

Authorities reported that unscrupulous scam artists who operate as immigration “consultants” have been doing a brisk business as perplexed immigrants flock to storefront offices seeking help in confronting the new legal reality.

The fears have prompted the INS to launch a last-minute campaign to detail some of the provisions in hopes of reassuring immigrants. The agency has been training 16,000 officers for sweeping new revisions that alter scores of sections in immigration law and require the revamping of 75 different forms.

Still not completed, Virtue added, are written regulations for new income guidelines that are expected to limit the ability of many poor legal immigrants, especially those from Mexico and Central America, to petition for spouses, children and other relatives still living abroad.

Under the law, sponsors will have to show that they can support newcomers at a level of at least 125% of the poverty level, about $19,500 for a family of four. Moreover, sponsors will be required to sign new affidavits of support that will legally bind them to care for the immigrants for many years.

Meisler reported from Washington and McDonnell from Los Angeles.