Alien Fees for Amnesty Called Bar to Thousands

Application fees as high as $420 per family are excessive and will prevent thousands of illegal aliens from obtaining amnesty under the new federal immigration law, leaders of Orange County Latino and immigrants’ rights groups charged Monday.

“The Statue of Liberty is not extending her arms,” said Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, a businessmen’s group.

“The amnesty program is for . . . people (who are) coming from devastated countries of economic ruin. . . . They’ve been paying taxes for at least six long years. To make them now pay a very large amount seems very punitive,” Amin said.

The INS announced Monday that it would charge a basic fee of $185 for an illegal alien applying for legal resident status. Applicants under 18 would be charged $50, and the maximum any family would pay is $420.

The fee schedule was announced as part of a series of proposed regulations for the landmark immigration bill, which grants legal status to some illegal aliens who have resided in the United States continuously since Jan. 1, 1982. But some agricultural workers may qualify for amnesty with far shorter stays in this country.

“They’re exorbitant,” Orange County Latino activist Nativo Lopez said of the fees. Lopez, head of the local chapter of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, whose members are mostly illegal aliens with low incomes, said the organization will ask its members who apply for amnesty for a $100 donation to cover its own costs while realizing that many will not be able to pay it.

“We were hoping for a fee more in line with what people pay to adjust their immigration status if they’re already in the United States--about $35,” he added.

Harold Ezell, the INS’s western regional commissioner, defended the agency’s fee schedule Monday, saying that visas for legal immigrants cost $185 per person.

Ezell added: “You don’t hear about the exorbitant fees the illegal aliens pay smugglers and consultants who guarantee legalization with their magic formulas.”

David, when told of Ezell’s comment, called it an “outrageous statement from a public official” and added that he “would not equate this great country of ours with the level that Mr. Ezell puts it at with the smugglers.”

Lopez said Ezell seemed to be “putting himself in an analogous situation to the coyotes ,” a reference to the smugglers who transport illegal aliens across the border for a high price.

Ted McCabe, an attorney for Catholic Charities of Orange County, said the INS fees themselves were “more or less fair,” but the agency’s stated policy of granting no waivers for families living below the poverty line was not.

“When Congress passed this law, it specifically stated that an individual who could establish economic self-sufficiency and who has not used welfare would not be disqualified on the grounds that he or she might become a public charge,” McCabe explained. “So a family living below the poverty line is eligible . . . but a fee of $420, and possibly $700 (with legal and medical costs), is excessive. There ought to be some kind of a fee waiver.”

McCabe, whose organization already has registered 8,000 amnesty applicants and will provide the bulk of low-cost legal assistance for illegal aliens in Orange County, said he is frustrated with the INS’s whole approach to the legalization program.

The agency is so intent on preventing applicants from fraudulently obtaining amnesty, McCabe says, that it has designed application forms and regulations far too complicated for most people to fill out without the aid of a lawyer--who may charge $1,000 or more.

“If the INS were genuinely serious about granting amnesty to as many possible, they’d have a simple application form that anyone could fill out and charge a fee that anyone could pay,” McCabe declared.

The Reagan Administration moved to implement the new immigration measure, announcing regulations and fees that aliens must pay to obtain amnesty. Part I, Page 1.