INS Chief Pledges New Effort to Ease Key Amnesty Problem

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Commissioner Alan C. Nelson said Thursday in Irvine that he will issue guidelines soon that may give INS officials greater latitude in deciding cases where the new amnesty program for illegal aliens would divide families.

However, Nelson added that his new guidelines will not instruct officials to offer blanket amnesty to relatives of successful applicants.

The amnesty law, called the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, provides legal resident status to illegal aliens who have lived in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982, and to some agricultural workers who have been here a shorter time.

But it makes no provisions for non-qualifying family members of successful applicants, who could be deported.

Some legislators and Latino groups have called on the INS to offer some type of amnesty and work authorization to such people.

But Nelson, addressing a Town Hall dinner at the Registry Hotel, said only Congress could make such drastic modifications in the new law.

“We have some narrow ability to interpret the law, but we can’t rewrite the statute,” Nelson said.

“The law is quite clear--1982 is the cutoff date. . . . Anytime you’re dealing with human beings, you’ve got to allow your men to have some discretion. We’re going to have to review the cases as they come up.”

INS Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell said just 78 applications out of about 9,000 reviewed in the region involved “family unity issues.”

Nelson said he was not yet sure what instructions the guidelines would contain, saying only that they would attempt to make the process consistent while still allowing officials some discretion.

During a cocktail reception for Nelson before the dinner, about 50 members of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (National Mexican Brotherhood) marched into the hotel and, during a press conference of their own, called for an end to INS sweeps of illegal aliens during the one-year amnesty application period.

Bert Corona, one of the group’s organizers, said it had also begun a letter-writing campaign to ask Congress to amend the immigration law so families would not be separated.