Rights Workers Blast INS Over Amnesty Plans

Representatives of immigrants’ rights, labor and church organizations Thursday criticized proposed regulations for implementing the new immigration law as too restrictive and likely to deny amnesty to many people who should receive it.

Tentative regulations released by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service “indicate that the INS is seeing its role as a barrier and not as a bridge,” said Steve Nutter, one of several speakers at a downtown Los Angeles press conference called by the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Labor-Community Immigration Network. The two groups include most of the major Los Angeles organizations involved in immigrants’ rights issues.

Representatives called for less restrictive rules on absences from this country, a lower application fee than the $150-$250 range being discussed by the INS and revisions to ensure that families are not divided. They also argued for more relaxed rules on documentation of amnesty applications and stricter controls to ensure that material in applications cannot be used to deport people who fail to qualify for legal residence.

Recommendations are being sent to the INS in Washington in keeping with a request from the agency for public comment, speakers said. Final regulations are to be published several weeks before the agency begins accepting amnesty applications on May 5.

The law offers legal residence to illegal aliens who have lived in the United States, except for “brief” absences, since Jan. 1, 1982, and to those who did agricultural work in this country for at least 90 days during the year ending last May 1. Los Angeles County officials have estimated that as many as 800,000 people in the county might qualify.

The proposed INS regulations say that the absences allowed by the law must not exceed 30 days at a time or a total of 150 days since the beginning of 1982.

The Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights called for these periods to be revised to 90 days in a single instance and a total of 365 days. The Los Angeles Labor-Community Immigration Network suggested the elimination of any specific time limits, urging instead that “the test for continuous residency should be whether the alien intends continuously to reside in the United States.”

Confidential Information

The law bars the use of material in applications for any purposes other than to make a determination on the application itself or to enforce a ban on fraudulent applications. It provides for imprisonment of up to five years for violation of this confidentiality.

Arguing that these guarantees are not strong enough, the labor-community group urged that applications be sealed after a decision on legalization has been made in order to prevent their misuse to deport those who fail to qualify.

Nutter, western regional director for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, said that under the proposed regulations there will be cases in which some family members win amnesty while others do not. “We need to have methods in the regulations so that those who are legalized can keep their family together,” he said.

Housing Restrictions

Bruce Iwasaki, a spokesman for the labor-community group, cited restrictions on public housing benefits as another provision in the regulations that “will break up families.”

Nutter’s group called for filing fees of $50 per individual or $100 per family, while Iwasaki’s group suggested no specific figure but urged that there be a set fee per family, payable in installments. The fee should be waived completely in hardship cases, Iwasaki said.

Nutter also charged that the INS is “attempting to turn unions, hiring halls, into an arm of the INS” by requiring them to verify employment eligibility for workers referred under union contracts. “We’re very much against that. We don’t think verification should fall on the shoulders of unions, who are there to defend workers.”

INS officials have stressed their intent to apply the law fairly. Ernest Gustafson, INS district director in Los Angeles, said his goal “is that 100% of those who are qualified” will apply for legalization.

INS Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell announced Wednesday that he intends to form an advisory group, made up of critics as well as supporters of INS policies and practices, to oversee steps taken by the agency’s regional officials to carry out the law. Ezell, who spoke at an Anaheim conference on the new law, also pledged that the amnesty process “will not be a sting operation.”