The Immigration Mess

By Jacob V. Lamar

Brownsville, Texas. Weary yet hopeful, their bodies battered but their spirits high, the families while away the hours at the Casa Romero shelter for Central American refugees. They line up for a lunch of rice and beans, served from steaming kettles; they mop the floors and shoot pool; they practice English phrases; and they wait. And wait.

When they learn that their applications for political asylum in the U.S. are finally about to be dealt with, they trek to a makeshift Immigration and Naturalization Service post at the newly opened Port Isabel Processing Center, 25 miles away. Two weeks ago, angry local officials forced the shutdown of an INS office in Harlingen to rid the town of 500 refugees who have been shoehorned into overcrowded shelters and camps since last year. At Port Isabel, the refugees, clutching their meager possessions, line up to be fingerprinted and questioned by immigration officials -- and then wait some more to find out if they will be allowed to partake of the American Dream.

The hectic scene in southern Texas reflects the confusion of a U.S. immigration policy that is on the verge of being swamped by a virtual tidal wave of new arrivals. "We stand on the precipice of an enormous immigration crisis," says Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson, who, with Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky, wrote the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. It is a crisis with which the U.S., despite its cherished history as a nation of immigrants, is not prepared to cope. "We have no population policy," complains a State Department official. "No total concept on which to build."

The emergency springs primarily from Central America. Since last June, 30,000 Nicaraguans fleeing war and economic misery have flocked to the U.S. That number could be dwarfed by the tens of thousands expected to arrive in the U.S. in 1989. As a result of Moscow's liberalized emigration policies, some 50,000 Soviet citizens, primarily Jews and Armenians, will be allowed to leave the U.S.S.R. this year; most will be headed for the U.S. Several thousand of the 5 million Afghanistan refugees camped in Pakistan will also emigrate to the U.S.

The Immigration Reform Act is an example of the disarray of current policy. Designed to control a huge influx of illegal immigrants, the law provided an opportunity for 3 million to 5 million aliens who had lived and worked in the U.S. since before 1982 to become permanent residents. It also established penalties for employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens, making it much more difficult for them to find jobs and provoking discrimination against job seekers who merely look like foreigners. But the law has not significantly reduced unauthorized immigration. The flow from the South continues at such a pace that the INS is embarking on what literally amounts to a last-ditch tactic: it will soon dig a 5-ft.-deep, 4-mile-long trench along the Mexican border near San Diego, in part to prevent fast-moving cars packed with illegal immigrants from racing across the boundary.

Moreover, the law has failed to forestall an epidemic of outright fraud and abuse. The Western regional INS office, which covers California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam, has handed out $1 million in fines to heedless employers in the past two years. But with 400 agents in the region, the INS hardly has the manpower to wage a serious crackdown and thus goes after only the most blatant offenders -- and many companies and illegal aliens are willing to take their chances. A survey by the University of California at San Diego's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, for example, found that some 41% of illegal aliens in the Southern California area admitted they had used fake information to obtain their jobs.

The U.S. is also wrestling with difficulties posed by the Soviet Union's decision to nearly triple the number of exit visas it will grant its citizens this year. Washington has long prodded Moscow for just such an opening to emigres. To accommodate the new Soviet arrivals, the Reagan Administration last year transferred 7,000 slots previously reserved for Asian immigrants to Soviet refugees, outraging advocates for Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants.

Efforts to devise a coherent immigration policy are hampered by the political power of ethnic groups that have sunk deep roots in the U.S. Over the past seven years, some 100,000 Irish natives entered the U.S. on tourist visas, then stayed on after their allotted time expired. The Irish have complained that a 1965 immigration provision giving preference to family members of recent arrivals has helped Asians and Latinos while discriminating against West Europeans. Two years ago, Irish-American activists took their case to Congress and received an enthusiastic hearing. With the help of new legislation pushed by powerful advocates like Senator Edward M. Kennedy, some 3,900 Irish were granted additional visas to enter the U.S. in 1987. Kennedy is now fighting for immigration legislation that will give preference to those with valuable professional skills, high levels of education and a knowledge of English, all conditions tailor-made for Irish immigrants.

The plight of the Central American refugees remains far more acute. Recent court decisions have held that applicants for asylum have to be given work- authorization documents, allowing them to seek immediate employment while the INS scrutinizes their pleas. But to stem a surge of arrivals from Central America, the INS delayed granting work permits until asylum applications could be processed and told the refugees to remain near their point of entry until the paperwork was completed. The new regulations helped turn the Rio Grande Valley into a giant alien way station.

At a packed Red Cross shelter a few miles from downtown Brownsville, the air is filled with the cries of babies and the smell of urine. Overcrowding and lack of sanitation in the area have contributed to an outbreak of hepatitis. Refugee advocates are infuriated by the Federal Government's inability to clear the bottleneck. Charges Roman Catholic Bishop John Fitzpatrick of the Brownsville diocese: "The INS is saying, 'Sorry, you can't leave to work, but we can't feed you.' "

Meanwhile, harsh sentiment against the refugees is growing. "Nobody knows who all these people are," says Brownsville trailer-court owner Bob White. "They could be terrorists, or bandits, or typhoid carriers." Harlingen Mayor Bill Card says his city decided to expel the INS from a registration post to send a signal to the Bush Administration that the area needs more help from Washington. Says he: "We have not been able to get the cooperation and attention of the Federal Government."

With the Federal Government straining under the budget deficit, it is unlikely that the U.S. can afford to continue spending $382 million to provide welfare and medical care for refugees, some 75,000 of whom arrived last year. Some experts believe the burden of caring for new residents could become so heavy that slamming the door on the huddled masses seeking a better life in the U.S. may be inescapable. "In some fashion, we've got to ignore the promise of the Statue of Liberty," says Mazzoli. "The U.S.'s moral responsibility to accept immigrants is not unlimited."

Nevertheless, the beacon of hope for a better life in America burns brightest for those who endure the most profound debasement and despair in their native land. While the U.S. today is ill-equipped to take them all in, the dream lives on. For that reaca p16.227son, the immigration wave is not likely to stop or even slow. "People aren't going to write their relatives and say, 'Don't come,' " argues Bishop Fitzpatrick. Nor, despite the burden, is the U.S. likely to turn its back on its history by hanging out a sign that reads NO VACANCY.

With reporting by Steven Holmes/Washington and Richard Woodbury/ Brownsville