Camping Out for Green Card Renewals

A surge in green card renewals has swamped immigration offices in Los Angeles and Orange counties and forced many legal residents to either get in line before dawn or spend the night camped outside.

Officials at the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s district office in Los Angeles say it’s not unusual for as many as 50 people to be in line at 5 a.m. weekdays, a full three hours before the office opens. Despite the best efforts of the agency to discourage such practices, people still show up to form a line as early as 3 a.m., said Sharon Gavin, INS spokeswoman in Los Angeles.

The problem is even worse at the INS’ Westminster office for immigrants, many of whom are driven by fear of losing their right to live and work in the U.S. Between 300 and 500 people have been arriving at sunset to wait for the office to open at 7 a.m. the next day.

Hugging blankets against the cold and clutching thermos bottles of coffee, they spend up to 14 hours on their feet--with no guarantee of receiving anything in return. Many reach the end of the line only to learn that their applications cannot be processed that day and they must return another time.

“This is horrible,” said Rita Lacerda, a Brazil native who stood under torrential rains one night and blustery cold the following night, only to be turned away both times. “I’ve lost two days of work because of this.”

INS officials say they are doing their best to cope with what they call a surprising jump in green card renewal applications.

Many of those renewals are being sought by people who gained legal residence in the summer of 1990 under a sweeping federal amnesty program that began in 1986 and legalized 3 million undocumented U.S. residents--more than half of them in California.

This year, an estimated 200,000 green cards, which are good for 10 years, will expire in Southern California, INS officials say.

Only two Southland offices--in Boyle Heights and Westminster--handle renewals.

The lines have been far longer at the Westminster office, largely because the building has just one clerk’s window, said John Brechtel, the officer in charge. That limits the number of cases that can be accepted each day to 70 or 80, he said--which means many fail to be helped on their first visit.

In addition, Brechtel said, hundreds of immigrants showed up months in advance of their renewal dates, before his office was ready for the onslaught of applicants.

Immigrants are allowed to apply for legal residency renewals six months before their green cards expire. People in line recently said INS officers and mailed notices have encouraged them to apply that early.

But Brechtel and INS officials in Washington say such advance applications are unnecessary. Immigrants, Brechtel said, should apply no more than two or three months before their cards expire. “The word is out that people need to renew their cards, and everyone is coming at the same time,” he said.

The number of those waiting in Orange County has swelled in the past six weeks, he said. And the problem will continue until the INS moves its office to Santa Ana this summer, he said, where there will be five windows.

Meanwhile, two employees at other offices will be transferred to Westminster, and the INS is setting up appointments for Saturdays to keep some applicants from having to stand in line a second day.

For now, however, several hundred immigrants arrive before sunset, joining a line that wraps around the corner of the building.

As the line grows, snaking across a parking lot, applicants take turns ferrying coffee and snacks from a nearby convenience store. The only bathrooms within walking distance are in businesses that are closed for the night.

Immigrants who recently withstood downpours and low temperatures to ensure that their cases did not go awry said the long waits are not only frustrating but disruptive. Many must miss work or scramble for child care for several days before they can be seen.

Faustino Rojas took a vacation day from his shipping job to stand in line with his wife, Guadalupe. The Norwalk couple arrived at 6 p.m. with their lawn chairs and snacks and were stunned to see a line already forming.

“We’ve just been chatting and trying to keep warm,” Faustino Rojas said. “We cannot afford to be turned away, because I don’t have any other days I can take off. We decided to spend the night here to make sure they see us.”

Immigrant advocates blame the agency.

“This problem was created by the INS,” said Santa Ana attorney Jess Araujo. “If their job was registering U.S. citizens for jury duty, they wouldn’t have a backlog. But they are dealing with people who are less likely to complain, less likely to feel they have rights.”

He is skeptical of INS explanations that the agency was surprised by the surge in green card applications, contending that officials should have foreseen the coming jump caused by the amnesty program.

“The problem is they don’t give it the priority that they should,” he said.

Other government agencies that serve hundreds of taxpayers a day, such as the state Department of Motor Vehicles, use various tactics to prevent long waits. The DMV conducts some of its business through the mail, schedules appointments and provides staff to handle walk-in patrons too, said spokesman Evan Nossoff.

Russ Bergeron, an INS spokesman in Washington, D.C., recommends that immigrants use the agency’s Web site to download applications: https://www.ins.usdoj.gov.

*

Times staff writer George Ramos contributed to this story.