Ben Keller – Staff Writer
Ever since President Obama declared his deferred action policy giving young undocumented immigrants a two-year reprieve from deportation, many have been coming forward to begin the path to residency and some even further with dreams of citizenship.
With a new White House bill appealing to Congress to speed up the process, even more are braving the arduous legal steps that will finally allow them to live and work outside of the shadows.
Camille Cook, a certified immigration specialist with the Law Offices of Salazar and Cook in Fresno, said the latest draw is a rule passed earlier this year by the Department of Homeland Security that makes the residency process easier by letting immigrants stay in the country while waiting for a visa.
Made for those with spouses and children that are already U.S. citizens, the rule, which went into effect March 4, allows illegal immigrants to claim hardship on their families if they had to go back to their home countries to wait until a waiver is processed pardoning their unlawful entry into the states.
“A lot of people have been married for years and own homes and just weren’t going to risk it,” said Cook, who started helping immigrants more than 20 years ago. “And now they’re going to give it a shot. They’re tired of their husbands living in the shadows.”
Others are coming to her as some of the 2.7 million or so migrants that were awarded green cards during the amnesty program of the Reagan years. Cook said many of the children of those beneficiaries born outside the U.S. have come of age but are still undocumented, a lot of them having been assigned to a wait list that can be up to 17 years to get a green card.
The latest proposal by the White House would create a temporary visa and a process letting undocumented immigrants apply for permanent residency within eight years or sooner if the backlog of those currently waiting on a green card is cleared up first.
But for the estimated 11 million living in the U.S. illegally, talks of immigration reform within the federal government are a muddled medley of political ideas that cast uncertainty on current procedures and may do little to address the challenges many of them face in gaining legal status or finding employment.
Still creating questions for many, Cook said, is the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that went into effect last August offering immigrants under 31 a two-year work permit if they’ve graduated high school or college or served in the military and have a clean moral record.
“Mostly, what we see is a lot of confusion because people think there’s some new law,” she said. “They’re confused between if there’s another new program aside from DACA, which is not a change in law but change in procedure, and then there’s Congress talking about changing the law.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 254,800 living in the Central Valley are either legal residents or otherwise undocumented, many of which take up jobs in farm fields where no work permits exist like those in the high-tech professional industries.
Cook said details of a potential agriculture worker program are currently being thrown around, but any proposal would likely have to provide at path to citizenship or else it appears as a form of indentured servitude that tarnished the Bracero labor program in the midcentury, she said.
Other challenges to immigrants, she said, include the lack of transportation and education, especially among agricultural workers that tend to move around a lot. That tends to stand in the way of citizenship as U.S. government and civics tests are only offered in English.
She added that immigrants are not afforded free legal services for criminal charges the same way that citizens are, making deportation defense both emotionally and economically trying.
However, several resources are available to undocumented for just those situations. Operating with a grant from the Department of Homeland Security as well as private donations from groups like the Walmart Foundation and Granville Homes, the New American Legal Clinic at the San Joaquin College of Law in Clovis offers naturalization
and residency services and helps to secure family-based immigrants for family members of citizens.
Besides assisting deferred action applicants, the office also works regularly with victims of crimes to help prosecute perpetrators, making them eligible for special U Visas that create temporary legal status for up to four years.
Established in January 2011, the New American Legal Clinic has been a site of relief to many immigrants,
relying on a staff of six to eight law students each year to provide free legal to low-income families and in some cases informing them of benefits they didn’t know they could receive before.
The clinic’s director Justin Atkinson said the program was really in response to the high rate of fraud in the area in which unlicensed service providers mimicking government agencies would take immigrants’ money and fail to deliver.
“There’s immigration consultants that aren’t lawyers that are taking advantage of people,” said Atkinson. “In fact, the Department of Homeland Security recognized Fresno as one of seven cities in the United States with the highest immigration fraud.”
NALC also works closely with agricultural employer groups like the United Farm Workers union and Nisei Farmers League of Fresno to educate businesses on complying with federal laws on hiring undocumented workers.
Atkinson said this mission is only going to get more critical as government leaders step up enforcement of its Internet-based E-Verify system that compares employers’ I-9 verification forms to U.S. government records.
It’s a troubling scenario when an estimated 80 percent of field workers in the U.S. are illegal immigrants with an even greater share in California.
“(Government agents) have to check those and make sure they’re accurate and give a certain amount of time to fire employees,” he said. “That’s what employers are very worried about if they don’t comply there are serious consequences.”
Created in 1966, Central California Legal Services in Fresno also helps financially challenged immigrants living throughout the San Joaquin Valley with free civil legal services.
Out of the organization’s more than 60 attorneys, paralegals and legal secretaries, a team of seven helps pave the path to residency and naturalization for migrants workers from its offices in Fresno, Merced and Visalia.
Janie Munoz-Tafoya, team leader with CCLA’s Family Law and Immigration division, said the recession has hit immigrants harder than most groups, leading them to seek out free help not just for attaining legal status, but also in cases of housing and education conflicts and securing special visas for victims of violent crimes.
“There’s a huge need out there I don’t think it’s being met currently,” she said. “There’s not enough services that are low cost.”
CCLA is funded by the Legal Services Corporation in Washington D.C. and more than 20 other smaller funding sources.