Tough New Immigration Rules Delayed Till Saturday

Just hours before tough new immigration restrictions were to go into effect today, a federal judge on Monday delayed the law’s implementation until Saturday because he said the federal government had not given adequate notice to those targeted by the crackdown.

Although the ruling delays the law on technical grounds for just four days, the immigrant rights’ groups who won the postponement said they would now move to challenge some of the law’s key provisions.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said the federal government had not allowed 30 days to pass since the sweeping regulations were officially published in the Federal Register last month. Technically, his decision allows the law to begin today but delays the regulations that implement the law until Saturday.

“Four days may seem minimal to some, but under these circumstances, four days cannot be trivialized,” Sullivan said.

In immigrant communities across the United States, April 1 has become an ominous date. Often acting on rumors or misunderstandings of the law, immigrants have arranged hasty marriages and converged on immigration offices by the thousands to meet what they perceive as a hard-and-fast deadline.

In fact, it is six months after the new legislation takes effect that those in the country illegally will find it far more difficult to achieve legal status, with or without a legal spouse.

However, immediately upon implementation, the law would give authorities more clout to deport illegal immigrants. But officials have insisted that the streamlined procedures do not mean they will stage sweeps of undocumented residents.

The attorneys who won Monday’s delay said the ruling gives immigrant communities, the lawyers who aid them and even Immigration and Naturalization Service officials more time to learn about the intricacies of the law, which President Clinton signed last fall.

“We’re absolutely delighted,” said Robert Rubin of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the attorneys who argued the case. “Given the dramatic changes that the new law imposes, an additional [few] days is significant to communicate the impact.”

The delay also will give Rubin and the attorneys working with him more time to prepare challenges to the law. Rubin said he first intends to file for a temporary restraining order, challenging a provision of the law that allows immigration officers to reject those seeking political asylum without a review by superior officers or the courts.

Other challenges are also in the works, said Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Although the Justice Department can appeal Monday’s delay to the U.S. Court of Appeals, there was no word on the government’s plans. Justice Department lawyers had argued during Monday’s hearing that delaying the law would prove even more confusing--to immigrants and the authorities.

Linda Wendtland, a government lawyer, said the INS has programmed its computers so they only accept new immigration applications beginning today. Also, she said, the tens of thousands of INS agents would be “entirely at a loss for how to proceed” if the law were delayed.

Wendtland also argued that the delay would invite lawsuits from anyone unhappy with the decisions made during this nebulous period. Anyone could argue that no law was in place during the proceedings, she said.

Congress approved the immigration law last fall amid a public outcry, particularly in California, for tougher restrictions on those in the country illegally. The legislation increases barriers at the nation’s borders, expands the list of crimes that will lead to deportation and takes a variety of other measures to crack down on fraudulent documents, immigrant smuggling and the expenditure of federal money on undocumented residents.

Proponents of the law said Monday that they were outraged by the legal challenges, which they likened to the ongoing court battles over Proposition 187, the ballot measure targeting illegal immigration that was approved by California voters in 1994.

“This shows that our form of government is not without flaws,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who played a key role in advocating the new law. “A couple of groups can circumvent the entire Congress and the president of the United States. This is law and ought to go into effect.”

But critics of the contentious legislation said it would have been unfair to put such a sweeping law into effect amid so much misinformation.

A Long Beach minister, interviewed Monday, described how he recently performed a rushed wedding between a Colombian man and an American woman who were trying to beat what they perceived as a crucial April 1 deadline. The minister, who declined to be identified, said another immigrant couple recently rushed to Las Vegas for their last-minute nuptials.