An Amnesty Cutback : Immigration: The INS will close its Garden Grove office and move its caseload to locations in Santa Ana and Buena Park.

By JIM CARLTON

April 4, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

GARDEN GROVE — In his attempt to file for permanent U.S. residency under an amnesty law, Jordanian national Nedal Hamad said he had to wait all day to ask a question at one immigration office and stood in line for three hours to obtain a form at another.

Hamad, 22, then discovered the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service office on Brookhurst Avenue near his home in Garden Grove. There was no line. Amnesty applicants sat in comfortable seats watching television as they waited for their names to be called. And most surprising of all, Hamad said, a clerk addressed him politely in his native Arabic.

“It was very easy,” Hamad said with a smile Tuesday after spending half an hour at the Garden Grove office obtaining his permanent residency card.

But effective May 1, immigrants such as Hamad will have to go elsewhere for assistance. In a budget-cutting move, the INS is closing its popular Brookhurst office, forcing thousands of immigrants to go to two remaining INS legalization offices in Santa Ana and Buena Park.

Immigration consultants and immigrant rights advocates say immigrants have to wait at the other offices for days or weeks to obtain permits to work so they can gain legal residency status.

“It’s really totally unfair,” said Teresa Rios, an Orange County representative of Hispanic Advocacy, a nonprofit Riverside group that provides free legal advice to immigrants. “The whole intent of the immigration reform law was to make things easier for the immigrants. But now the government is making things more difficult.”

But immigration officials said they do not believe the closure will be disruptive.

“Let me assure those who have a problem with this (closure) that services will continue,” said Bill King, INS’ regional director of immigration reform. “No one is going to suffer.”

The Garden Grove closure is one of four planned by the INS within the next few weeks in the Los Angeles-Orange County area. The others are in Pomona, Van Nuys and Torrance. The offices were among 14 temporary facilities originally set up in the region to process applications under amnesty provisions set forth by Congress in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The offices all opened in 1987.

Immigrants having five years of continuous residence in the United States since 1982 were declared eligible for U.S. residency. Although the INS’ original application deadline was between May, 1987, and May, 1988, the deadline has been extended indefinitely pending resolution of two lawsuits challenging INS’ rejection of some applicants.

Now that three-quarters of those eligible for amnesty have been processed, King said, the federal agency is beginning a phase-out of the legalization offices. All of the offices nationally are to be closed by the end of September, 1991.

“Everybody’s got to realize this is a temporary program and that our resources are not unlimited,” said King, who is based in Mission Viejo. “We never intended for them to stay open beyond their need.”

The Southland closures will save the INS about $1 million a year, King said.

All of Garden Grove’s cases are being sent to the Santa Ana office.

“I don’t believe it will cause any inconvenience at all,” George Newland, chief legalization officer in Santa Ana, said of his office’s increased caseload. “Really, we’re just going to incorporate their cards and files with ours and we will hold all of our interviews here.”

The Garden Grove office has processed 43,000 immigrants and continues to review them at the rate of 3,000 a month, INS officials said. On a typical morning, as many as 300 immigrants show up for appointments.

Most of the cases involve the second phase of the amnesty program, which provides immigrants with permanent residency status. The immigrants received temporary residency cards under the first phase of the program, enabling them to live and work legally pending further processing. Immigrants with temporary cards have had 30 months in which to apply for permanent residency.

Immigration rights advocates fear that Garden Grove and the other offices are closing too quickly to meet the needs of all immigrants.

“Most of our clients have come to us because they have lost a job because they did not have work authorization,” Rios said. “If we cannot get a permit for them in three months, they cannot work during that time.”

Closure of the offices also comes at an inopportune time for immigrants still filing for residency under the amnesty extension, said Peter Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. Those immigrants, Schey said, are still in the early stages of the program, filing for temporary residency.

“This is a final group of people being squeezed out of the legalization doors,” Schey said. “These people are either going to get pushed in the door or they are going to be pushed out.”

This group of applicants began filing for amnesty after the application deadline was delayed pending a ruling by a federal appeals court on two lawsuits against the INS, Schey said. The suits, filed by Schey’s group, challenge INS’ rejection of amnesty applicants because they had either traveled outside the country during the residency period or traveled without INS permission while their applications were processed.

Although immigrants may continue going to other offices, some of those who visit Garden Grove said they are reluctant to travel elsewhere.

“This is a clean, big office and the people are very nice with the clients,” said Norma Egbert, a notary public and immigration consultant from Alta Loma in San Bernardino County. “At other offices, the clerks say, ‘I don’t speak your language.’ ”

Newland described his clerks in Santa Ana as courteous.

“I think what happens is if you don’t give the person the answer he wants he thinks you’re being rude to him,” Newland said.

King said the decision was made to close Garden Grove and not Santa Ana because a regional telephone bank to answer amnesty questions is in the Santa Ana office, and would be too costly to move.

Felix Gonzalez, an immigration counselor at the office who reviews claims for amnesty, said he will miss the camaraderie he and other office workers have enjoyed with the attorneys, consultants and immigrants with whom they have dealt.

“I don’t like to go to another office,” Gonzalez said. “A lot of people are coming here from L.A., Hollywood and Pomona because the treatment is good.”

Guillermo Lujan, 38, of Downey was among about 150 immigrants at the Garden Grove office Tuesday. He had spent the past six months getting ready for permanent residency, only to learn Tuesday his case was being transferred to Santa Ana.

“I guess I will have to wait,” Lujan said dejectedly. “Hopefully, it will not be for too long.”