3 Centers to Promote Citizenship

An activist interfaith group has received tentative approval to open three centers--two in the San Fernando Valley--to help interview prospective citizens and shepherd their cases through an unprecedented backlog of applications.

Valley Organized in Community Efforts, better known as VOICE, will operate two of the so-called outreach centers at Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima and Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Sun Valley. The third will be located at St. John the Evangelist Church in the Crenshaw District.

All three, which will join nine existing centers throughout the city--including sites in North Hollywood and San Fernando--are scheduled to open in the next several weeks pending final approval from local officials with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Though prompted by the growing anti-immigrant movement in Congress and the panic it has caused among even legal emigres, VOICE’s outreach centers also have a long-term goal: to register thousands of naturalized Latinos to vote in time for the 1996 presidential election.

“The citizenship campaign is just one part of a larger picture,” said Father Tom Rush, pastor of Mary Immaculate and a leader of VOICE, a coalition of 15 Valley churches and synagogues. “It’s only one part of getting people more involved in their respective communities and out to vote, especially in 1996.”

But the group’s immediate mission is to help legal immigrants seek citizenship and speed their applications’ approval by walking them through the INS’s massive, impersonal system. Applications for citizenship have risen more than 200% in the past year because of concerns over the passage of Proposition 187 last November and a number of bills pending in Congress, which would severely limit immigrants’ rights.

“I think the outreach sites will definitely help us draw more people in to apply for citizenship, and in the long run it will help them get their applications processed faster since we’ll be walking them through it,” Rush said.

The privately run but federally approved outreach sites are the INS’s latest experiment to streamline the application process and ease its backlog. The plan requires community groups to screen applicants for eligibility and knowledge of English, compile applications and submit them in bulk to an INS office in Bellflower.

Even though the program is just seven months old and only a handful of community-based organizations are involved so far, the wait for interviews is already considerably shorter, said Richard Rogers, INS district director. For example, candidates whose applications were turned in by outreach centers last week will be scheduled for interviews in November rather than waiting until next year like many people who applied on their own.

“We’re trying to encourage people to go that route,” Rogers said. “Eventually, we’ll shift more resources to the outreach centers because they seem to work well.”

The outreach centers allow INS officials to test and interview applicants in their own communities instead of a centralized Downtown office. That means fewer applicants to deal with and shorter waits and makes the process more comfortable for everyone involved, Rogers said. Groups such as VOICE have set up the approved centers in church halls, school auditoriums and offices.

“The outreach sites are a great advantage,” agreed Father Miguel Vega, director of the Active Citizens’ Campaign, an umbrella group overseeing a countywide grass-roots citizenship drive. Its members include VOICE and three similar interfaith groups in East Los Angeles, South Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley.

“You should just see the smiles on people’s faces when they know they can go to their own church and feel comfortable talking and being interviewed,” Vega continued. “They’re more likely to pass the test.”

While the process of becoming a designated outreach site officially calls for applying to the regional INS office by mail, VOICE and other groups took a more aggressive approach. After months of trying in vain to phone, fax and mail letters requesting an appointment with Rogers, the groups held a 130-person rally last month outside the Downtown Los Angeles Federal Building. After marching up to Rogers’ office, seven representatives from the group finally got an appointment with him to discuss the outreach sites.

“Different groups do things differently,” said Vega, former pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church. “One way we work is to do everything in public. That may mean taking people down to City Hall or the Federal Building, but maybe that’s how it needs to be done.”

VOICE and the other groups have also been holding numerous citizenship application drives around the Valley and other parts of the city to pull in as many applications as possible. While VOICE has its sights on 7,000 new citizens, the Active Citizens’ Campaign is looking to sign up 25,000 new citizens in Los Angeles County in time to register them to vote in the 1996 presidential election.

“One of the things that became crystal clear Nov. 8 [when Proposition 187 was adopted] is that in our communities we have very little input electorally,” Vega said. “If we can get the people, we can turn some of these elections around.”

Today, the Active Citizens’ Campaign will continue its rallying efforts at St. John the Evangelist, where 1,000 people are expected to turn out for Rogers’ official announcement on the approval of the three designated outreach sites. Participants are also expected to riddle U.S. Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) with questions about the Congressional Immigration Reform task force’s proposed legislation.

“This event on Sunday hopefully is going to be a celebration for us in getting one step accomplished in our agenda,” Vega said.

At a recent citizenship application drive in Sun Valley, about 50 people at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church were fingerprinted, photographed and questioned about their jobs, years in the United States, and affiliation with political groups. Gricelda Lepe, a 20-year-old VOICE volunteer, sat behind a large table ticking off questions designed to screen prospective citizens for ulterior motives such as spying.

She giggled when asking the questions of the elderly couple seated before her, a pair of silver-haired octogenarians who smiled politely at the young woman they called nieta --granddaughter.

“I interviewed my grandparents on a fluke. They just happened to be the next people in line, but it made it easier for them because they were nervous at first,” said Lepe, who lives in North Hollywood with her grandparents and other family members.

“I have a big family and they’ve been here [in the United States] a long time and they needed to finally become citizens. . . . My grandparents came for my parents’ wedding more than 20 years ago and never went back to Mexico.”

Lepe, a member of Holy Rosary Church in Sun Valley, said her grandparents only agreed to go through with the application process because they could take the test at their local church.

“It will make it a lot better for them,” Lepe said. “Having it here will be easier for a lot of people.”