WASHINGTON: In a move designed to keep families together, the Immigration and Naturalization Service Friday reversed it and announced that spouses and children of newly legal immigrants can stay in the United States without immediate threat of deportation.

Instead of trying to expel family members of the 3.1 million applicants for legalization, INS Commissioner Gene McNairy said the agency will focus its limited resources on securing US. Borders.

“We can enforce the law humanely,” McNary said at a news conference. “To split up families only encourages further violations of the law, as they try to unite.”

Immigrant-rights groups hailed the agency’s decision.

“This will clearly be a step in the right direction,” said Ricardo Cordova, an attorney with the Modesto Office of California Rural Legal Assistance. “The deportation fear is still the biggest fear.”

Some 1.8 million people applied for amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, and another 1.3 million people sought special farmworker status under the same law, but not all of their relatives qualified for legalization.

Though general amnesty applicants had to prove they had lived in the United States since January 1982, some family member’s arrived after that cutoff date.

About 1.6 million of all the general and farmworkers amnesty applicants now live in California.

For the last three years, the INS has allowed ineligible family members of legalization applicants to remain in this country for “compelling humanitarian reasons.” Those who could not meet these criteria faced deportation.

The problem, McNary said, is that district INS officials have had to use their own discretion in deciding which applicants qualify for humanitarian reasons. The result has been a confusing pastiche of rulings, in which some districts have proven stricter than others.

“I had to make a decision that would set a unified policy, that would eliminate confusion,” McNary said.

Critics said another result of the old policy was the heartless persecution of the needy, such as one report of a 7 year old Texas child stricken with cancer who the INS was allegedly seeking to deport. McNary said Friday that particularly notorious story did not influence his decision.

Cordova cited one Modesto family, whose father qualified for legalization but whose mother and children did not. The children are now nearing college age, but under the old policy they could not gain work permits that they need to work their way through school.

“I happen to (know) a lady who has little 6 or 7 year old child they want to deport,” said Lilly Torres of the Fresno based El Concilio Immigration Project. “We had two kids that are 15 and 13 that were picked up.”

McNary said that “just a handful” of family deportations actually have taken place, and he did not estimate how many people may be affected by the new ruling.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is often critical of U.S. immigration policy, blasted the new policy as one that will greatly increase the number of immigrant residents.

“We are rapidly building to an immigration tidal wave the likes of which this country has never seen,” Daniel Stein, the federation’s executive director, said. “What you have here basically is a blaoket, rolling amnesty program … it’s arbitrary, capricious and overboard.”

The new policy routinely will grant what is called voluntary departure status to spouses and unmarried children below the age of 18 if they can prove they have lived in the United States since Nov 6, 1986. That was the date that the immigration reform act was enacted.

These family members cannot have been convicted of a felony, or three misdemeanors, and must otherwise be admissible as an immigrant. They can obtain work permits, and will have their cases reviewed annually.

The voluntary departure program basically allows people to remain in this country while they are waiting for immigrant status. Without voluntary departure status, these people would have to wait in other countries.

Article extracted from this publication >> February 16, 1990