The Window Closes

Monday’s deadline for illegal immigrants to seek residency in the United States under a temporary family unification program brought a predicted crush of thousands of last-minute applications at Southland offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

April 30 was the final day in a four-month window approved by Congress for illegal immigrants to apply for legal residency. Applicants were required to file a petition showing they would be sponsored financially by a relative or employer if they continue to live in the United States. The petition is a first step toward applying for legal residency.

“They can have a sponsoring family member apply for them to become a lawful resident and eventually a citizen,” said Sharon Gavin, INS spokeswoman. “This is not accidental. It was done to keep families together.”

One byproduct of the deadline was a rush by immigrants with partners who are citizens to marry before the deadline--making the immigrant eligible for permanent residency.

For several months, marriage license applications have been surging across the nation in cities with large immigrant populations.

In Orange County, civil servants said they processed a record number of marriage licenses in April.

An expected rush of last-minute marriage ceremonies did not materialize. There were a few, however. Natalia Vasquez of Baldwin Park was among the last people to receive a license from the Orange County clerk-recorder before the deadline.

Vasquez, a U.S. citizen, married her boyfriend, Jose Colis, a Mexican citizen and the father of her 7-week-old son. “I never thought I’d get married in jeans but that’s O.K., I’m still happy,” the newly named Natalia Colis said.

Other immigrants had prepared for the deadline but still felt compelled to make last-minute checks on their paperwork. Carla Ochoa of Garden Grove went to the Santa Ana office of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional to make sure all was in order for an application her mother filed in 1995.

“I just had to make sure there’s no problem because [immigration] will get a lot harder tomorrow,” Ochoa said outside the immigrant-rights group’s office.

The INS, often criticized by immigrants and their advocates over lengthy waits for virtually all services, found a way at many locations Monday to make the process almost wait-free.

INS Works to Speed Applicants Along

At the agency’s regional office in downtown Los Angeles--the nation’s largest and busiest--workers opened the doors at 6 a.m., two hours earlier than usual. Already the line was snaking around the corner. Within two hours, it had swelled to 2,000 people.

INS officials had summoned extra staff, but it clearly wasn’t going to be enough, said Thomas J. Schiltgen, the INS district director. The Los Angeles INS office serves residents of seven counties from San Luis Obispo to Orange.

Schiltgen and his aides hurriedly decided to put a drop-off box outside, so that people trying to beat the deadline wouldn’t have to stand in line with hundreds of others transacting nondeadline business with the INS.

Two employees stationed themselves at the drop box and briskly took completed forms from outstretched hands.

“Everything’s in there? OK, you’re good to go,” INS staffer Dennis Culhane Jr. said over and over as he gathered envelopes with petitions and supporting documents.

“This is great. I’m very surprised,” said Ramona Zuniga of La Puente, who was filing the residency petition on behalf of her daughter-in-law. “I saw a warning about this in the news and thought, ‘I’m gonna have to wait for hours.’ This took five minutes!”

After five hours, the office had taken in 3,000 petitions. The line swelled again at 3:30 p.m., as people got off work.

Not everyone had heard about the expedited service. Enriqueta Diaz of Downey said she arrived at 5 a.m. and stood in line for six hours before hearing of the drop box. After handing her forms to an INS employee, she smiled wearily and said she wasn’t upset because “everybody had to be in line.”

For each of the petition filers, the real wait lies ahead. Legal-residency applications can take months or years to wend their way through the INS.

Monday’s deadline was a cut-off point for filing a “skeletal” INS form that officials said was simple enough to fill out in just a few minutes. No actual documents such as birth certificates or visas were required.

The INS will review the petitions and ask for verifying paperwork.

To move the line along, the INS did not give receipts or other proof that the papers were filed by the deadline. That upset Maria Esther Cabrera of Los Angeles, a U.S. citizen who filed the petition for her brother. She said she feared the INS might lose the paperwork.

“People will accuse us of that,” Gavin said. Forgoing a receipt was the trade-off for keeping the line moving, she said. “People would accuse us of losing things anyway, even if we did give receipts.”

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Times staff writers Jason Song, Patricia Ward Biederman and Matt Surman contributed to this report.