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U.S. Proposes to Offer 500,000 Legal
Residency
By ESTHER SCHRADER, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON--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."
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