Thread: 20 yrs Immigrants status stalled

20 Years, Immigrants' Status Stalled
By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer
2 hours ago

LOS ANGELES - Luis Orozco was among the first in line nearly 20 years ago when federal lawmakers offered U.S. citizenship to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants. Today, he has a wife, two daughters and a car _ but he still is not an American citizen.

For a surprising number of immigrants, the 1986 citizenship program still causes lingering problems. Hundreds of thousands whose applications were rejected sued the government and are only now seeing their visas processed. Thousands more sponsored relatives who are still awaiting legal residency.

What's more, immigration attorneys attribute much of today's immigration crisis to the last overhaul of citizenship rules, which they say encouraged fraud, increased unlawful border crossings and set up employer sanctions that have never been enforced.

Those problems provide cautionary tales as Congress considers whether to grant citizenship eligibility to another round of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

"I hope the new people who apply have patience," said Orozco, now a 40-year-old busboy who finally got a temporary residency card three months ago. "I applied right away and look how long it took."

The political shorthand used to describe the current Senate proposal is a path to "earned citizenship." It sounds simple, but some immigration experts warn the legislation contains the same conditions that invited a flood of lawsuits by excluding hundreds of thousands of applicants.

For Orozco, who crossed illegally from Mexico as a teenager, the 1986 amnesty seemed a chance to stop living in the shadows.

But an immigration official said he did not qualify because he left the United States briefly to visit his ill father. By Orozco's account, the official said that violated a key provision of the amnesty: that applicants could not leave the United States for one year beginning May 5, 1987.

As similar accounts mounted, attorneys filed more than a half-dozen class-action lawsuits against the federal government on behalf of thousands of immigrants such as Orozco.

According to the lawsuits, immigration officials told thousands of immigrants they did not qualify because they briefly left the country, had violated tourist or student visas without notifying the government, or were legal for a brief period between 1982 and 1987.

Many immigrants received rulings that suspended orders for their deportation while the class-action cases moved through court. That let them get work permits and driver's licenses. Others, such as Orozco, continued to live illegally.

In 2004, Orozco successfully applied for late amnesty under a settlement of one of the largest class-action amnesty cases, Catholic Social Services v. Ridge.

The lead lawyer in that case fears that the current Senate bill will repeat past mistakes.

As it is currently written, the legislation would make only one-fourth of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States eligible for citizenship, said Peter Schey, an attorney who has represented about 350,000 immigrants in amnesty lawsuits. In 1986, about half of the estimated 6 million illegal immigrants qualified without problems.

The Senate bill includes measures to secure the border. It also creates a path to earned citizenship for some illegal immigrants and establishes a new guest worker program. A vote is expected later this week, but it still must be reconciled with a House bill focused only on border enforcement.

Schey points to language requiring that an amnesty seeker be in the United States illegally on one day _ April 5, 2006 _ to qualify for eventual citizenship. Schey said that provision would exclude thousands of illegal immigrants who briefly had legal status but lost it or violated the terms of their visas.

Schey said another provision that requires U.S. residence for five years to start on the citizenship path would exclude about 8 or 9 million immigrants.

Demetrios Papademetriou, a former Department of Labor administrator who was involved in the 1986 amnesty, said a similar five-year residency provision then spawned many of the current lawsuits _ and plenty of fraud.

"If you're going to swallow hard and go with a legalization program, then you might as well try to create incentives for virtually all of the people here," said Papademetriou, now president of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.

Supporters of the Senate bill point to the success stories from 1986.

Mirna Burgos applied for amnesty after immigrating illegally from El Salvador. Now 51, she is a U.S. citizen, speaks fluent English and teaches Spanish at a high school in Pomona.

If not for the amnesty, she would be "cleaning houses or something," Burgos said. "I tell my students, if I can become a teacher without any language and as an illegal, then they can do anything."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Hundreds of thousands whose applications were rejected sued the government

I couldn't get past this statement!

This certifiable nightmare just keeps getting better.

If your request for citizenship is denied just sue. They will give it to you then. But you better watch out. Once you are an American Citizen you will get nothing. In fact you will have to give until it hurts.

But to think in 20 years they haven't gotten caught up on the last amnesty!! Let alone all the legal immigrants waiting patiently and now we're talking MILLIONS more? And MILLIONS more the legal route? Each year! It is such a joke!!!! It's a sick shame and a disgrace. Now let me ask any of you......if you did a job this bad wouldn't you be fired? If you took the place of someone who screwed up this bad and didn't do a thing to fix it......wouldn't you be fired? And I'm not talking about the guys in the immigration offices. I'm sure they've been complaining and quitting since. But to ignore this, this bad, after 9 11 is inexcusable.