Immigration Reform Effort Comes Up Short

With the 106th Congress nearing adjournment, a final burst of negotiations has produced only modest deals to ease immigration restrictions.

The agreements are a far cry from sweeping reforms that President Clinton and congressional Democrats were pushing before the Nov. 7 election--proposals that would have granted a “mini-amnesty” to as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants who entered the country before 1986 and would have helped hundreds of thousands of others from Central America and Haiti gain permanent residency.

Late Thursday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and agricultural interest groups were pushing for a significant new program to help illegal immigrants who are migrant farm workers apply for amnesty. But Capitol Hill sources said that this initiative also is likely to die on the legislative cutting-room floor.

“There’s been a huge opportunity to enact good immigration policy that’s been lost,” said Rick Swartz, an advisor to groups seeking to ease immigration laws. “They got beat by the anti-immigration forces outside and inside the Congress.”

One provision that survived in the final wrap-up legislation, which could win approval in the House and Senate as early as today, would temporarily allow certain immigrants to pay $1,000 to stay in the United States while waiting for green cards that certify permanent residency.

Immigrants would only be able to apply for such relief until April 30. But experts said that the change nonetheless would help many people who otherwise would be forced to leave the country while their immigration paperwork is being finished. Those who leave the country could be barred from returning for as long as 10 years.

Gloria Curiel, a Santa Monica attorney and immigration analyst for the Univision television network in Los Angeles, said she has been contacted by hundreds of people who face that kind of Catch-22.

“Even a temporary provision that prevents the splitting up of families for years and years is a good thing for America,” Curiel said.

Among the other changes that congressional aides said survived the protracted negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders is a provision helping immigrants who were in the United States before 1982 overcome legal hurdles to apply for residency under a landmark 1986 amnesty law.

Republicans, including Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, said that those provisions could help people who have lived for many years in the United States and sought to “play by the rules,” but whose cases have been stymied by bureaucratic snafus and hung up in the courts.

Peter Schey--a Los Angeles-based attorney who represents many of the 1980s-era amnesty applicants, many of them living in Southern California--hailed the legislation.

“This will bring an end to a 12-year nightmare for up to 400,000 immigrant families, most of whom have been forced to live in constant fear of deportation,” he said.

Exactly how many immigrants ultimately would benefit, though, is unclear. Schey said that a major challenge will be contacting the applicants, some of whom have died or left the country or perhaps gained legal status another way.

“Hopefully we can locate a couple of hundred thousand,” he said.

But Democratic lawmakers--particularly those who also are part of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus--said that the Republican-led Congress has unfairly ignored the pleas of Latino groups and others for “fairness” for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who have lived for many years in the United States and hold down good jobs.

They are especially irate that Congress did not give more recently arrived Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans and Haitians the same preferential immigrant status that Nicaraguans and Cubans were given in the late 1990s.

The Los Angeles area is home to the largest concentration of Central American immigrants, especially Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Representatives of the two groups were bitterly disappointed by their exclusion from any amnesty plan.

“This is an example of the hypocrisy of the Republican-led Congress, in that on the one hand they claim they want the Latino and immigrant vote but on the other hand they do precious little to demonstrate their concrete support of the Central American and other immigrant communities,” said Carlos Ardon, executive director of the Assn. of Salvadorans of Los Angeles.

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Anderson reported from Washington and McDonnell from Los Angeles.