Terrorist attacks ripped many immigrants’ worlds to pieces

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2002 | 11:04 a.m.

Luis Quintana, a U.S. native, thought his bride of nearly two years, a woman from his family's hometown in Mexico, by now would be not only his lawfully wedded wife, but also legally able to live with him in Las Vegas.

Instead, Claudia Ojera awaits a letter telling her she will have to return to Michoacan, Mexico, with their 10-month-old daughter, Brissa, for up to a year while her U.S. residency becomes official.

She is one of thousands of immigrants in Nevada whose futures were thrown into limbo last Sept. 11.

A law that would have made it easier for Ojera and immigrants like her to become legal residents was considered a shoo-in for a Sept. 11 congressional vote last year. It was quickly sidelined after the attacks.

"Before Sept. 11, there were talks between (Mexico President Vicente) Fox and (President) Bush, it seemed like there might be amnesty for workers, we had a robust economy, all these things were going to happen," immigration attorney Peter Ashman said.

"But now, we're nowhere near where we were a year ago."

On the surface times don't seem likely to get better soon for immigrants -- Attorney General John Ashcroft announced last month that the Justice Department would press criminal charges against those who fail to notify the INS of address changes, as the law requires.

But below the surface, immigration attorneys and others say, the pendulum may be swinging back toward easing immigration restrictions.

Ashman, former chairman for the Nevada chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, sees as one positive sign the arrival on the Senate floor of legislation meant to help undocumented immigrants legalize their status after graduating from high school in the U.S.

"I think we're just recently getting to the point where Congress wants to talk about the subject of immigration again, and can separate it from the subject of terrorism," Ashman said.

Angela Kelly, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based group, agrees with Ashman.

She said Congress seems ready to distinguish between immigrants who just want to work and those who would import terror, after first turning its attention to correcting flaws in the process of issuing student and tourist visas in the months following Sept. 11.

The terrorists had both types of visas and changes Congress put in place include prohibiting tourists from attending schools while waiting for the INS to approve student visas and upgrading airport computer checks on travelers with tourist visas.

The post-Sept. 11 crackdown has also spawned a trend that may influence Congress and immigration law in the long run, according to Silas Shawver, until recently director of the Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project, a nonprofit agency that helps immigrants in Nevada become citizens.

Shawver said efforts by legal residents to naturalize have doubled around the country.

"These people are future voters, and many of them are Latino, who tend to be in favor of more rights for immigrants," he said.

"I think the huge numbers of Latino voters are being recognized by candidates in upcoming elections, and this will influence upcoming legislation as far as immigration goes."

For the short term, Ashman and other immigration advocates would like to see some movement on the law that was once considered a shoo-in, 245-I.

The law would allow an estimated 200,000 immigrants who are married to citizens or legal residents or those with jobs in the U.S. to stay in the country while their papers are processed, as long as they pay a $1,000 fine for having entered the country illegally.

The bureaucratic delays involved in even clear-cut cases would make the law welcome, Ojera says.

She and Luis were married in December 2000 in Michoacan. Shortly afterward Luis returned to Chicago, his hometown, to begin what he thought would be a simple, quick process with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to bring his wife over the border legally.

The process was neither simple nor quick. Then they discovered Ojera was pregnant and due in November, further complicating matters. Months went by, and the INS asked for more paperwork. Then Ojera crossed the border illegally in June in order to be by her husband's side for their daughter's birth.

If 245-I had been reinstated last September, as expected, that would have solved matters.

"It seems unfair that many should have to pay for the acts of a few," Ojera said.

Immigration advocates look to Congress and the public to push for the fairness they say the Justice Department, which oversees the INS, seems unwilling to provide.

"I think the American public can distinguish between the 19 evildoers of Sept. 11 and the immigrants who come here to live the American dream," Kelly said.

But Justice Department officials, she said, "seem to be casting a wider net than before and catching many immigrants who are really benign."

Kelly points to Ashcroft's recent announcement on immigrants notifying the INS of changes in address.

"There's potentially 9 million immigrants out there who have changed their addresses. The possibility of the INS processing this amount of information is fantasy, and just doesn't make sense."

Another, lesser known, example of changes in INS practices is that business and professional visas applications are taking longer to process and being turned down more frequently, said Eva Garcia Mendoza, a Las Vegas immigration attorney and current chairwoman of the state's AILA chapter.

"More than half of the visas for international managers and executives I've run across are being denied, where it used to be more like 15 percent," she said.

"The INS says it's being more careful and double-checking everything, but I've seen cases that don't make sense," she said. For example, Garcia Mendoza said, a Japanese construction company of more than 2,500 employees sent a man to open a Las Vegas subsidiary two years ago with no difficulty. This year his father -- who is higher-ranked in the company -- applied to join the operation, and he was denied.

Change is sure to come. It's just unclear what kind of change.

The Bush administration has proposed putting the INS in the new Homeland Security Department.

Advocates say that the two traditional functions of the immigration agency -- enforcement of immigration laws and services to immigrants -- must be separated if the agency is to be effective in its new role.

The key to dealing with immigration after Sept. 11, they say, is separating terrorists from those who come here to start a new life.

"The challenge," Ashman said, "is to direct our resources at stopping those who would do us harm and not at those who want to work, reunite with their families or go to school."