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Illegal Immigrants Enter Twilight Zone as
Teenagers
Law: Two pro soccer players, an Ivy League student are among thousands
whose lives are derailed as status emerges.
By ANNE-MARIE O'CONNOR, Times Staff
Writer
She was the classic
inner-city overachiever. She steered clear of gangs and drugs and embraced
high school honors classes. She became
class valedictorian, got a full scholarship to an Ivy League university
and graduated a year early. Then, just a
few weeks before starting at a prestigious law school, her one-woman
conquest of the world was abruptly halted.
She is an illegal immigrant--and
therefore ineligible for federal financial aid. She watched in dismay as
law classes began without her.
Immigration experts say hundreds of
thousands of young immigrants in America--innocent bystanders brought as
children by illegal immigrant parents--are coming of age in such legal
limbo. At least 200,000 young illegal
immigrants have already reached the age--between 16 and 18--when their
status starts to limit their ability to get a driver's license, obtain
federal education aid or get a good job, said Jeff Passel, an immigration
expert at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.
Each year, 50,000 to 100,000 illegal
immigrants nationwide reach this age, he said. Unless immigration laws
change, at least a million illegal immigrant children in the United
States--the majority from Mexico--will find their lives severely stunted
by their undocumented status, Passel said.
The impact is greatest in California,
where a third of the about 6 million illegal immigrants--children and
adults--are believed to reside, experts say.
"It's a human tragedy," said Harry
Pachon of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont. "They really are
stateless people. Some of these kids are 4.0 students, and have skills to
contribute to the economy." Los Angeles
advocates traveled to Washington last week to lobby for Clinton
administration immigration initiatives that, if approved by Congress,
would help many of the youths--though not the Ivy League-educated daughter
of immigrants from Colombia. "This is
like a state of psychological limbo," said the student, who came to
California as a child in 1987. Her parents could have become legal
residents--had they known they qualified before it was too late to apply.
Many of these youths arrived in the late
1980s or early 1990s with immigrant parents from impoverished villages in
Mexico or war-torn regions of Central America. They are the youngest
members of an immigration boom that brought cheap labor that was welcomed
by employers. Some of the youths have
temporary residence permits--but little hope of qualifying for permanent
residency status, experts say. This status is given to those who qualify
by marriage; those sponsored by family members; to employees filling
specialized jobs; or to refugees or those given asylum status, a year
after winning such a classification. Most would not even qualify for a
proposed amnesty for immigrants who have lived in the United States since
1986 because they arrived too late. Not
all are Ivy League bound. But, as these young people come of age, they all
face a crisis: They have all the expectations of U.S.-born children, but a
fraction of the opportunities. They speak poor Spanish and have only the
vaguest memories of the countries they left behind. For them, coming of
age with dubious legal status is a headache, a heartache and a Kafkaesque
legal labyrinth. "So many of these kids
are ashamed," said Judy London, staff attorney for the Central American
Resource Center, which helps immigrants attain legal status. "They feel
like they've done something wrong."
Being Haunted by the Past
Two soccer players for Los Angeles'
Galaxy team hit this wall recently. Tomas Serna and Jose Retiz, stars of
their Santa Ana high school soccer team, turned out to be illegal
immigrants. They were drummed out of the Galaxy last month. They could not
be paid because they entered the country illegally and didn't have the
required documents. "Having your past
come back to haunt you is something that is only supposed to happen to
politicians," said James Smith, an immigration expert at Rand Corp., a
Santa Monica-based think tank. "This is something that happened when
you're 5 haunting you. Every time they succeed and achieve, their secret
comes forth. It's purgatory." Glenn
Spencer, president of Voice of Citizens Together in Sherman Oaks, said
that if Proposition 187 had been implemented--excluding young illegal
immigrants from public schooling, hospitals and other services--these
young people would not face this bottleneck because they never would have
made it this far. "The social and
economic costs of illegal immigration have already been catastrophic to
America," Spencer said. "Wouldn't it be
better if these bright people were back helping their country of origin?
We don't want to strip-mine every country of their best and brightest."
Not all the children are from illegal
immigrant families, experts say. Matt
Tallmer, spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. in
Washington, said many parents of the undocumented young people are legal
residents who erroneously assumed their status automatically covered their
children. Others are the adopted children of American-born parents who
assume their citizenship automatically extends to their adopted children.
For most of these young immigrants, the
clock is ticking. Their 18th and 21st birthdays are legal deadlines that,
once passed, make it much harder for them to obtain legal status.
If they are caught with fraudulent
documents or convicted of a felony, they lose their chance for legal
status. Before 1996, it was much easier
to resolve such cases, experts say. Back then, a judge had discretionary
authority to grant a green card, allowing people to work and remain
permanently in the United States. This applied to any illegal immigrant
who had been here for seven years and could demonstrate "good moral
character" and extreme hardship, INS spokesman Dan Kane said.
Stiffer Standards Since 1996
Law The 1996 Illegal Immigration and
Immigrant Responsibility Act brought stiffer standards. Children now must
be able to prove that they have been here at least 10 years and
demonstrate that their deportation would inflict "extraordinary and
unusual" hardship on their parents, spouse or children.
The stricter rules left young people
such as Tony Lara out in the cold.
Lara's family fled the Salvadoran civil
war when he was 10. Lara's mother, like Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez's,
died coming to the United States. He heard that she drowned while crossing
the border, or more disturbingly, was murdered. His father was deported
for dealing drugs, leaving Lara and his sister alone.
Lara's sister was quickly adopted by an
Irish immigrant and his family. Lara, then 12, was abandoned by a series
of relatives. He ended up in a rat-infested storage garage with some
friends. Somehow, he also became a state wrestling champion at El Camino
High School. "I used to hide it really
well. Everybody thought I lived with my family," Lara said. "I only told
people who I really trusted." One of
them was his coach, Terry Fischer. Fischer already knew several families
who had taken in unaccompanied immigrant children. So he invited Lara to
live with his family. "He was such a
good kid, and he had no place to go," Fischer said. "We lose so many kids
like this through the cracks, kids who don't make it or get killed. I
guess I can never run for president because I have an undocumented alien
living with me." The Fischers tried to
register Lara as a foster child or adopt him. They say authorities told
them they were harboring an illegal immigrant and subject to a $200-a-day
fine. In January, U.S. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced private immigration bills to grant
permanent resident status to Lara and to Guy Taylor, an orphaned Canadian
who lives with his grandmother in Garden Grove.
There are 90 private immigration bills
pending before Congress, including a bill to give Elian Gonzalez U.S.
citizenship. The efforts to deal with
such cases have their roots in the Cold War, when the federal government
permitted immigration from regimes hostile to the United States, such as
Cuba and Nicaragua, but threw obstacles in the way of immigrants from
friendly nations, such as El Salvador and Guatemala.
Now many immigrants, such as Rigoberto,
23, stand a good chance of legitimizing their status through the
Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, known as NACARA.
Among other things, the act allows tens of thousands of Salvadoran and
Guatemalan asylum applicants who have been here since 1990 to apply for
permanent residency. But applicants must make it through a thorny thicket
of legal regulations to qualify--and many fall through the cracks.
Rigoberto--his middle name--began his
senior year at UCLA in deportation proceedings. He said officials told him
that because the war in El Salvador was over, his political asylum
application had been turned down. Because his family brought him to
California in 1988, he is applying for permanent residency under the
relief act. But his pending status makes
him ineligible for federal education aid, so financing college has been a
four-year struggle. He took semesters off to earn money to pay for the
next semester. He took out bank loans.
"I could end up going to medical school
or I might get deported," he said. "It's pretty much like being in limbo."
Many young immigrants in the lurch will
be able to formalize their status if Congress amends the relief act to
give Haitians and other Central Americans benefits similar to those of
Cubans and Nicaraguans.
Life
Could Be Transformed Supporters want
to attach the parity amendment, along with the new amnesty, to legislation
to increase the number of visas for high-tech workers--which is expected
to come up in Congress sometime in the next few weeks.
Jaime, a Cal State Northridge student,
is one of those whose life could be transformed if the legislation passes,
and he was among the Los Angeles advocates who traveled to Washington last
week to urge its passage. A soft-spoken
and articulate 22-year-old, Jaime came from El Salvador in 1991.
Now completing his junior year, he has
already done paid research on AIDS and cancer at Northridge and UCLA. He
wants to earn a doctorate in biochemistry.
But he arrived a year too late to apply
for legal status on his own under the immigrant relief act and turned 21
before his mother was granted permanent residency. INS officials say his
mother could still apply for a visa on his behalf--but that could take
five or more years, and he would have to leave the country in the interim.
Now he's here on a work permit tied to a
pending asylum application. Experts familiar with his asylum claim believe
it probably will be denied. Since he
can't receive college loans and financial aid, Jaime works nearly full
time to pay school fees of $1,000 a semester. A single chemistry book cost
him $119. Officials say there are many
such stories out there. Los Angeles Community College District officials
say that one reason more qualified low-income students don't apply for
financial aid is because some are illegal immigrants.
Experts say the scope of the problem
will grow as more immigrants come to the United States.
"These kids face enormous psychological
problems," immigration expert Passel said. "It strikes me as very wasteful
to have invested in kids who are ready, willing and able to make
contributions to the larger society, and we won't take them. American
society is relegating them to a second-class, underground existence."
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