U.S. Proposes to Offer 500,000 Legal Residency

The Clinton administration, in a sudden turnaround on immigration policy, is proposing to offer legal residency to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants who were left out of the sweeping federal amnesty program of 1986.

The proposal, if approved by Congress, would affect about 8% of the estimated 6 million illegal immigrants in the United States, administration officials said. More than a third of them are believed to live in Southern California.

The proposed legislation would alter an obscure provision of immigration law that offers legal residency to all immigrants who have lived continuously in the United States since 1972 and who are deemed to be of good moral character. The measure would change the date of eligibility to 1986.

“It’s a mini-amnesty; it’s a stepping stone,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy group. “It’s widely known in the Latino immigrant community. People are excited about the prospect of people who have been here a long time who work hard being rewarded for their efforts.”

The administration proposal was unveiled by Vice President Al Gore on March 30 in an announcement that was covered extensively by Spanish-language media but received little attention elsewhere. Chances for rapid passage by Congress appear slim, but administration officials said they will seek to attach the measure as an amendment to a bill that would increase the number of skilled worker visas. That legislation is expected to win congressional approval.

The proposal may reflect an effort by the administration to curry political favor at a time when the number of Latino and Asian American voters--and campaign contributions--are growing fast. The fate of the millions of illegal immigrants in this country resonates with immigrants who have obtained citizenship and can vote.

With the U.S. economy still expanding and unemployment lower than it has been in three decades, anti-immigrant sentiment appears to be on the wane. The AFL-CIO, for example, recently proposed a new amnesty program for millions of undocumented workers and repeal of the 1986 law that made hiring them a crime.

“It’s an election year, and people are paying some attention to Hispanics,” said an administration official who requested anonymity. “It doesn’t hurt to have Hispanics know that Gore is proposing this solution.”

The proposal is an attempt by the administration to resolve class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of an estimated 350,000 immigrants who claim that they were wrongly discouraged from applying for the 1986 amnesty program because of short-term absences from the United States. It also would apply to an estimated 150,000 immigrants who are not plaintiffs in the suits.

Government lawyers have fought the lawsuits for more than a decade. Until last month, Clinton administration officials insisted publicly that the claims should be settled in the courts.

“I believe that revising the registry date from 1972 to 1986 would not only provide humanitarian relief to many long-term immigrants but also reduce or eliminate the need to continue litigating some of the large class-actions still lingering from the 1986 legalization program,” Gore said in announcing the administration’s about-face.

While the proposal is generating considerable excitement in Latino communities, lawyers representing the immigrants involved in the lawsuits said that it is not enough. The registry date change would allow the litigants to apply for legal residency, they noted, but it does not guarantee that immigration authorities will grant it in each case.

“Our class members do not want a new amnesty program which will involve a long wait to be legalized, completely new applications, probably fights over new regulations over how the new law is interpreted,” said Peter Schey, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who represents all but 10,000 of the plaintiffs.

Schey said that his clients want the amnesty they say they were eligible to receive years ago, and they may also seek millions of dollars in monetary damages from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The legal battle has its roots in the way the INS handled the 1986 program, which granted amnesty to any immigrant who had lived in the country continuously since 1982.

Under the legislation, amnesty seekers were required to prove continuous residence, but brief trips abroad were not supposed to affect eligibility.

The class-action suits were filed on behalf of immigrants who contend they were improperly discouraged from applying for amnesty by INS officials because they had taken such trips. By the time they learned that the INS gave them bad advice, the deadline for applications had passed. Many tried anyway and became known as “late-amnesty” applicants.

Federal authorities have said that the number of people discouraged from applying for amnesty is far smaller than the lawsuits contend.

The plaintiffs, meanwhile, have been living in legal limbo. Most were granted temporary work permits while the cases were fought in the courts. But the work permits leave them ineligible for welfare and education programs and make it difficult for them to buy homes, obtain college scholarships or travel abroad.

Now many of the work permits are expiring, putting the immigrants at risk of deportation.

Adriana Fernandez was 11 when she entered the United States illegally from Uruguay with her parents and settled in Houston. She attended school and became fluent in English.

Because she and her family visited their homeland for several weeks in 1984, however, she was denied residency under the amnesty program.

Fernandez, now 31, managed to obtain enough money for two years of business college in the 1980s. But the money ran out, and her work permit made her ineligible for scholarships. She has held a series of low-paying clerical jobs since.

A few months ago, her grandmother in Uruguay died, but Fernandez was unable to go to the funeral. Her work permit does not allow foreign travel.

“It’s crushing psychologically,” Fernandez said. “We’ve been pending for so many years, and our lives have been put on hold forever.”

Frida Dominguez, 42, is a single mother in Los Angeles who entered the United States legally from her homeland of Peru in 1981 but overstayed her visa.

When she heard about the amnesty offer a year after it became law, she went to an INS office and applied. But immigration officials discovered in her passport a stamp indicating that she had made a 25-day visit to Peru two years earlier. Her father had been sick.

They told her the trip made her ineligible for amnesty. She left the office in tears.

Ever since, Dominguez said, “it’s been a nightmare, a complete nightmare.”

As a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, Dominguez has been able to get and keep a temporary work permit enabling her to hold a clerical job at a swimming pool supply company. But her children are considered illegal immigrants. Her 21-year-old daughter cannot get a driver’s license and is ineligible for college financial aid.

“There are so many limitations for us, especially for my daughter,” Dominguez said.

Administration officials hope to be able to forge something of a compromise by resolving the lawsuits filed on behalf of people like Fernandez and Dominguez without directly admitting guilt.

“A change in registry date provides a clean fix to this unfairness without having to backtrack on prior statements in litigation,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste. “There is definitely a more receptive public awareness to these issues of fairness for immigrants than there was even, say, a year ago. And so we try to take advantage of that and see what can be done.”