Aliens Jam U.S.’s INS Centers to Beat Clock : Daily Total 25,000; Deadline for Amnesty Program Days Away

WASHINGTON —  With chances for an extension of the amnesty program virtually wiped out, record numbers of illegal aliens are jamming immigration centers nationwide to seek legal residency, straining facilities, fraying nerves and raising some fears of fraud.

Immigration officials had expected the last-minute surge before the program expires at midnight Wednesday, but the rush took on increased urgency after the Senate on Thursday chose not to act on a measure extending the one-year application period another seven months.

Briefing reporters Friday, Alan C. Nelson, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, hailed the firm deadline.

“We wouldn’t want to send a message below the border that it’s still OK to come here illegally and then if you do, there still might be amnesty,” Nelson said. “Congress made it clear, ‘One time only,’ and stuck to their guns.”

By 6 a.m. Friday, more than a thousand applicants had lined up outside a Houston INS center, two hours before the doors would open. “We’re just flooded here,” said Robert Murray, legalization officer. “We expect it to be that way the rest of the time . . . . The whole block was completely surrounded, and they’re still coming.”

At Florida’s six legalization offices, applications have risen as much as 80% in the last two weeks, causing interminable waits for aliens. By the opening hour at a center in Hialeah on Thursday, more people had lined up than could be processed the entire day.

Javier Haime, a 30-year-old Peruvian immigrant, began his vigil at midnight two days in a row but was not served. “By the time we filed into the building at 7 a.m. (Thursday) and were led upstairs, we were far behind,” he said.

Nationwide, the daily crush of applicants has reached 25,000, up from 2,700 a day in January, and officials at some INS centers are bracing for even heavier turnouts next week. The Los Angeles area accounts for almost half of the new surge, with its huge Mexican immigrant population and aggressive public education campaign on the program.

Opening for Weekend

Many of the INS’ 100 legalization offices around the country will be open today and Sunday, and Nelson pledged that applications would be taken from anyone in line by midnight Wednesday.

In the blocks-long lines at INS centers, illegal immigrants offered a variety of reasons for not coming forward earlier--inability to raise the $185 application fee, problems gathering required documents, fear of the INS and just pure procrastination.

“I thought it was a trick,” said Eledoro Vargas, who has been working as a self-employed sign painter in Miami. Finally convinced that he would not be deported, he wound up waiting 24 hours to get his legalization interview.

In Houston, a Nicaraguan applicant remarked: “It’s like Christmas shopping. You wait until the last minute.”

At the INS center in Decatur, Ga., where a banner reading “Out of the Shadows--A New Beginning” hangs over the waiting throng, Liberian immigrant Sam Burphy, 30, who has been in the country illegally since 1971, explained he had known about the program for a while but “wasn’t too sure about it. I wanted to wait until I was really sure about it.”

With late filers now turning out in droves, INS offices have been scrambling for new ways to receive their forms. “We’ve accepted applications at a supermarket in a Hispanic community,” said Frank Siciliano, an agency official in Phoenix. “The mountain has gone to Mohammed.”

Given to Jail Inmates

Applications have been delivered to jail inmates who can qualify if they have no felony convictions.

The legalization program is open to people who have lived illegally in this country since before Jan. 1, 1982, except for brief absences. Individuals must pay a $185 filing fee, while families are charged $420.

When the program began last May, the INS said it expected about 2 million aliens to apply, but some immigrant activists estimated the illegal population as high as 6 million. About 1.3 million people have applied so far, with 90% getting approval. A separate program for farm workers has attracted about 400,000 applicants.

The dispute over how many people were eligible for amnesty, along with disagreement over whether the INS was too slow in mobilizing its education campaign about the program, was at the center of the debate over a proposed extension. That effort collapsed as the Senate failed to pass a House-approved bill to extend the program until Nov. 30. The Reagan Administration had vigorously opposed the extension, saying it was unjustified.

After the amnesty period ends, the INS will launch an intensified effort to deport aliens who are not legal residents and penalize employers who hire them.

Some immigration experts fear that many of the latecomers will be “difficult cases,” those with marginal documentation to prove their residency, and that others will be ineligible persons trying to take advantage of the chaos.

Expects Fraudulent Papers

“There probably will be fraudulent documents coming through here,” said Robert Murray, legalization officer for the Houston INS office. “We advise them if they are ineligible, but many insist on filing and we have to accept it (their money and paper work). One man told me: ‘Let’s throw it in the fire and see if it burns.’ ”

Recently, the agency initiated a simplified filing procedure to allow immigrants to pay their fees, fill out a “skeletal” application and provide documentation later.

In New York, Haydee Zambrana, executive director of the Concerned Citizens of Queens, asserted that this procedure is “encouraging fraud” because applying is so easy. She said that when the fraud is discovered months from now “there will be massive deportations,” an assertion INS officials dispute.

So far the turnout for legalization has been the greatest in the South and West, which account for 80% of the 1.3 million applicants, most of whom are from Mexico.

INS critics have charged that the agency geared its appeals to Mexicans and thereby did not get the word to Asian and European immigrants who are numerous in the East and Midwest.

This week, civic and charitable organizations in a number of cities blanketed neighborhoods with leaflets and held meetings in churches in a last push to bring in skeptical immigrants.

“We have a very large Irish and Central American community,” said Maureen O’Brien of Catholic Charities in Boston, where the turnout has been low. Unfortunately, she said, because many moved to this country since 1982, “they simply don’t qualify.”

The INS said its own advertising campaign is now at its peak.

Mixed Emotions

Although the thousands of aliens are willing to endure long waits and hardship to file their papers in the final crush, many are taking the step with sadness, because it means an official break with their homelands.

Some of those waiting Friday said they held out hope they could return home eventually to live, but feared that for reasons such as war or poverty, that might not be possible.

At the Decatur INS center, the Rev. Harry Washington, 55, a native of Guyana, said he had planned to return home but since arriving in 1973 on a tourist visa has been unable to afford to do so. “That’s how I actually came to stay in America,” he said. Now, after 15 years in the country, he said, “I love America. I thank God for it. I wish more Americans could value what they have.”

Staff researchers Dallas Jamison in Denver, Lorna Nones in Miami, Eileen V. Quigley in New York, Rhona Schwartz in Houston and Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this story.