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Refugees in U.S. at Risk of Being Uprooted Again

Orlando and Ana Diaz, shown with their children, made a life in this country to escape war in El Salvador. Now they worry about deportation. Dayna Smith/The Washington Post.

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28 1997; Page A01

Second of two articles

Orlando Diaz, a school custodian from Alexandria, and Carlos Aguado, a computer software consultant from Kensington, seem to have little in common.

Diaz, 38, is a refugee from rural El Salvador, where the U.S.-supported army fought a bloody war against leftist rebels from 1980 to 1992.

He crossed the Mexican border on foot in 1989 and is now struggling to make mortgage payments on a modest row house. His wife works in a fast-food restaurant at night.

Aguado, 40, is a highly educated man from Nicaragua, where U.S.-backed insurgents fought a leftist government from 1984 to 1990.

He collaborated with the rebels and flew his family here in 1988, when life got too precarious in Managua. He now owns a spacious suburban home and drives a Mercedes-Benz.

Yet all of a sudden, these two Central American immigrants find themselves in the same boat. Recent changes in U.S. foreign policy and a tough new immigration law that takes effect Tuesday, April 1, are combining to jeopardize their continued stay in this country. Now, even though both have lived here legally for years, both could be deported.

Across the nation, about 320,000 Central Americans, including more than 30,000 in the Washington area, will soon feel the effects of the crackdown. Some of those facing possible deportation are Salvadorans and Guatemalans who entered the United States illegally but were allowed to stay under a 1990 lawsuit settlement that granted them emergency amnesty. Others are Nicaraguans who were welcomed here by a sympathetic government but whose political asylum petitions collected dust for years.

"This is going to tear families apart," said Saul Solorzano, a Salvadoran immigrant who directs the Central American Resource Center in Northwest Washington's Adams-Morgan community. "It was war and insecurity that motivated them to leave, but now they have discovered a new world with new standards of living. It is horribly unfair to send them back to an environment where there is no work, no running water and people still drive ox carts."

Legally, the haven for Central Americans was supposed to be temporary, ending when the violence subsided in their homelands. But as the civil conflicts dragged on and wartime amnesties were extended again and again, the refugees put down roots. They began to feel like Americans and to believe that this was their home forever.

Turns out they were wrong.

First, the Clinton administration stopped extending blanket protection to Central American refugees, arguing that the wars were over and that it was time to go home. Now, immigration authorities have started ordering thousands of them to report for individual political asylum hearings. The first batch of notices for Salvadorans went out last week, and refugee advocates believe that many will lose their cases and be ordered deported.

Second, under the new Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and a related ruling last month by the immigration appeals board, war refugees will have a much tougher time fighting deportation orders and winning permanent residency.

Until now, if an illegal immigrant had lived in the United States for seven years, owned a house, paid taxes, obeyed the law and had children born in the United States, he or she stood a good chance of being allowed to stay on grounds of hardship. Thousands of Central American refugees have won such cases, and thousands of others were planning to apply once they had been here seven years.

Starting Tuesday, however, an applicant trying to fend off deportation must have lived in this country for 10 years and must meet a much stiffer test of "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship," such as having a child or parent who is a U.S. citizen and is gravely ill or totally dependent on the person being deported. Also, Congress has placed an annual limit of 4,000 on the number of deportations that can be waived for humanitarian reasons -- and that ceiling already has been reached for 1996-97.

Supporters of the new immigration law say the contributions made by the refugees, and the difficulties they may face if sent back, cannot offset the compelling national need to set firm limits on the number of immigrants allowed to settle here. The government, they say, must ensure that foreigners welcomed during temporary emergencies do not remain in the country, competing with U.S. workers and receiving government benefits.

By definition, they argue, the amnesty offered in 1990 to Central American refugees who had entered the country illegally was to be short-term. Even though amnesty was extended three times by Presidents Bush and Clinton before it was allowed to expire in December 1995, they say it was never intended as a means of becoming a permanent resident.

"While people from El Salvador may have made a contribution to our society, they have a moral obligation to return home now and help rebuild their own," said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "If we don't enforce the temporariness of amnesties, then no one ever leaves. If we turn asylum programs into immigration programs, we are just moving the industrious class of people from one country to another."

The Immigration and Naturalization Service says that, technically, illegal immigrants who turn themselves in and receive deportation notices before April 1 can have their hardship petitions reviewed under the old law. But according to immigration lawyers, most judges are expected to follow the new guidelines, and some judges have postponed hearings until the new law takes effect. Judges also have been ordered not to grant any more deportation waivers unless the 4,000 limit is increased.

Diaz, who was an agricultural technician in El Salvador, is devastated by the turn of events. His two youngest children were born in the United States, and his 10-year-old son can barely read or write Spanish anymore. After years of scrimping, he and his wife just bought their small row house.

"I don't know what will become of us. Everything we have built is here, and the situation in El Salvador is still so difficult. To go back and start from nothing would be a tragedy for us," he said. "Every country has the right to make its own rules, but if we had thought we were going back, we never would have invested so much."

For Nicaraguans, the legal situation is slightly different but no less threatening. Many applied for political asylum years ago, and their cases were delayed indefinitely as a de facto form of amnesty. Others lost their asylum bids but were not told to leave. And each year they remained in the country brought them closer to the seven years they needed to live here before applying for a deportation waiver.

But last month, the immigration appeals board ruled in a case challenging the new law that once immigrants receive an initial notice that they may be deported, the clock stops on time they are accruing toward the seven years of residency. Many Nicaraguans received their initial notices several years ago, and the ruling means that all the residency time they had built up since then has been wiped out.

Aguado received his first notice in 1993, but he was never given a hearing date. He stayed here, built his software company, purchased a gracious home and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and payroll taxes. Last year, he requested and won a deportation waiver on the basis of hardship. But the day after the immigration board's ruling in the other case, the government appealed his waiver, saying he had not been in the country long enough to apply.

"I am brokenhearted," said Aguado, the father of three. "When I started this process, I was completely legal, and I did everything according to the law. Now, in one day, they have cut our nine years here to five. It puts me, my family, my business and thousands of other Nicaraguans in total limbo."

Organizations of Central American immigrants argue that the refugees were misled by U.S. officials into believing that they would be able to stay and were encouraged by the Clinton administration to apply for deportation waivers and permanent residency. And they warn that Central America's struggling postwar economies cannot afford to lose the millions of dollars that relatives working in the United States send home each year to their families -- let alone absorb several hundred thousand returnees.

Two dozen immigrants' rights groups from across the country, with support from a few liberal members of Congress, have asked the government to grant permanent residency to all 280,000 asylum applicants from El Salvador and Guatemala. Locally, they have formed committees in Washington, Virginia and Maryland to circulate petitions and plan protests.

Nicaraguan refugee groups, in turn, say they have an extra, politically based right to be exempted from the new law. While many Salvadoran refugees opposed U.S. policy in their country and in some cases supported the leftist guerrillas, most Nicaraguan refugees supported the U.S.-backed contra rebels who tried to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.

Exile organizations in Florida, home to most Nicaraguan refugees and several conservative members of Congress who have championed their cause, have held rallies, and yesterday, they sued the Justice Department to ease the new guidelines. They argue that the Nicaraguan refugees' past service to U.S. interests makes them more deserving of special treatment than other Central American refugees.

"We don't want to discriminate against our Latino brothers, but our case is special," said Luis Debayle, director of the Nicaraguan American Chamber of Commerce in Miami. "Our people fought a war for American national security, and it's not fair to suddenly send them back just because it's no longer an issue."

Immigration officials say it will take several years for all the Central American asylum cases to be heard, and they stress that there will be no massive deportations or cancellations of work permits while appeals are in progress. And some families, authorities say, will qualify for asylum on the basis of past persecution.

But for tens of thousands of immigrants, peace in Central America eventually will mean pulling up stakes in an adopted, affluent country and trying to make a new life in impoverished and war-ravaged homelands.

"If this is what God wills and the law says, we will obey, but it's going to be very hard," said Jorge Salazar, 35, a building supervisor from Falls Church who left Guatemala in 1990 with his wife and two children. He worries that he won't be able to find a job there now.

"If there is a massive return, I can only imagine the chaos," he said. "But God has kept us together, so we will put our faith in Him and find a way to survive."

CONFUSED ABOUT THE NEW LAW?

Effective April 1, immigrants who are in the United States illegally must obtain a work permit or visa by Sept. 30 or have applied for permanent residency, political asylum or relief from deportation. Otherwise, if caught, they must leave the country and reapply for admission.

To apply for permanent residency, an immigrant must be sponsored by an employer or spouse who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The process can take months.

For answers to questions about immigration status, consult any of the following organizations:
Immigration and Naturalization Service
Washington
800-375-5283

Ayuda
Washington
202-387-0434

Hogar Hispano
Arlington
703-979-2640

Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights
Washington
202-547-5692

American Immigration Lawyers Association
Washington
202-371-9377

IMPACT OF NEW IMMIGRATION LAW

Before April 1

Refugees can apply for political asylum at any time after entering the United States.

Refugees detained while entering the United States can request asylum and automatically have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge.

Immigrants ordered deported can win the right to remain in the United States if they have been here seven years and can prove deportation would cause them hardship.

Foreign visitors with visas can leave the United States to travel or obtain new visas without being barred from returning.

Immigrants who are deported and then try to reenter the United States illegally can be barred from returning for five years.

U.S. citizens who sponsored relatives for immigration have to pledge that the immigrant will not become a burden on the government.

After April 1

Asylum seekers must apply within one year of entering the United States, though new rules will not be enforced until April 1, 1998.

Asylum seekers must convince immigration officials that they are afraid to return home or risk being immediately deported. If asylum is denied, any appeal to an immigration judge must be heard within seven days.

Immigrants ordered deported can win the right to stay only if they have been here 10 years and can prove it would cause extreme hardship to a relative who is a U.S. citizen or legal resident.

Visitors with expired visas must return home to reapply. Anyone who remains illegally in the United States longer than six months to a year will be barred from returning for three to 10 years.

Immigrants who have been deported and who try to reenter the United States illegally will be barred from ever legally returning.

For U.S. citizens to sponsor relatives, they must prove that they can support them at 125 percent of the poverty level until they become citizens or work for 10 years.
Sources: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, American Bar Association Go to Immigrants, Part 1

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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