Legalization Gets an Unjust Twist : INS Proposals Target Poor in General, Latinos in Particular

Officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service are giving clear and unmistakable signals that the agency will discriminate against poor applicants in general and Latinos in particular in implementing the legalization provisions of the Immigration Reform Act of 1986.

Immigrants who have resided “illegally” in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1982, and those who worked in agriculture for at least 90 days from May 1, 1985, to May 1, 1986, have the right to apply for temporary residence. After 18 months they can seek permanent residency status.

The legalization program was the carrot used to obtain passage of another part of the immigration act over the opposition of the Latino community and other concerned sectors. This provision provides criminal and civil sanctions on employers who knowingly hire persons unauthorized to work in the United States.

The threat of employer sanctions already is having an effect on the Latino community. Unemployed men and women, many of whom qualify for the legalization program, are being denied jobs because they have no work authorization. However, they cannot obtain work authorization unless they first apply for temporary residence beginning this May 5. But in order to qualify for temporary residence they must prove a history of stable employment and proof of current employment. The INS could easily solve the plight of these people, but the agency callously has refused to agree to issue them temporary work permits. Yet at the same time the INS has announced plans to disqualify applicants who have received unemployment-insurance benefits at any time. The devil could not have thought of a better plan to eliminate poor Latino applicants for legalization.

Thus many immigrants and refugees, who correctly or mistakenly believe that they can’t qualify for legalization, see the doors to survival in the United States closed and are already going back to their home countries.

So, at least in the short range, the law is having the effect in the Latino community that that INS wanted. It can claim that its draconian measures are eliminating some undocumented workers from the job market.

But the INS is having its cake and eating it, too. It is proposing to implement the legalization program in a way that could result in the unjust elimination of hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions, of poor applicants.

For example, in their proposed regulations for the program and in their public statements, INS officials have given notification that they intend to impose fees as high as $175 per applicant and $400 per family. This is an inhumane and discriminatory proposition, since a large percentage of the potential applicants, especially Latinos, earn survival wages in the vicinity of the minimum wage. The problem is magnified for families with several applicants. They could end up paying hundreds of dollars in application fees--on top of several thousand dollars in attorney fees, medical reports and other incidental expenses.

INS officials argue that the high fees are necessary to pay for the cost of the legalization program. But Congress never intended for the cost to be borne by the applicants. The law provides for supplemental appropriations to the INS of more than $400 million this year and in 1987, in part to pay for the legalization program. The intentions of the INS officials are clear. According to INS’ own figures, at least 4 million immigrants will apply for legalization. At $175 per applicant, the agency could raise the staggering sum of more than half a billion dollars.

The INS also is proposing that everyone seeking legal status apply in person to receive the work permit that the agency must provide at the time one requests temporary residence. This is strange, considering that the INS does not place the same burden on work-permit applicants who seek permanent residence under other sections of the immigration laws.

But the INS insistence on this provision is consistent with its bias against the poor. INS officials know that poor applicants will be missing a day or more of work and some may even be losing their jobs in order to pick up a document that their attorneys or other representatives could secure while submitting applications for legalization.

For applicants who are denied legalization, the INS also seeks to impose a 15-day deadline for the submission of appeals, together with supporting briefs and any additional evidence. The effect of this provision on poor applicants is obvious. They would probably be charged higher fees by their attorneys because of the rush nature of the work, and the work would necessarily be of a lesser quality.

INS officials are aware that--unlike white European, Canadian and Israeli counterparts--the majority of the Latino undocumented immigrants are working-class poor. The INS can fulfill its promise of a legalization program for millions of Latinos only with fair and humane policies and regulations. Its present plans fall far short of that goal.