CSS vs Reno Article

Longtime Residents Lose Work Permits in Suit's Dismissal

Lawyer for Immigrants Planning Court Action to Restore Amnesty

Forty-one-year-old Laura, with her assertive English, up-to-date work permit, and seven years on the same job, didn't know her right to stay in the United States had suddenly ended.

The prosperous-looking Jalisco native was returning from a medical visit to Mexico this February, when officials at Bush Intercontinental Airport asked for her papers. Passport, identification, work permit: as always, Laura had them and handed them over. But this time, the work permit was confiscated.

"It was very sad. Painful," says Laura, who asked not to be identified by her last name. "The law had changed the day before I returned."

The work permits of as many as 20,000 longtime Houston residents, including Laura, abruptly became invalid when a 12-year-old lawsuit, Catholic Social Services vs. Reno, was dismissed last month.

The plaintiffs, including Laura, had been issued work permits while the case moved through the court system. When it was dismissed, the permits became invalid.

The lawsuit had included as plaintiffs immigrants who missed a 1988 amnesty deadline because they didn't meet its residency requirement. Under the amnesty, only immigrants who proved they had lived here continuously since 1982 qualified for permanent residency.

The suit argued that a "brief, casual and innocent absence" from the United States shouldn't disqualify applicants. A federal district court agreed.

Last month, however, acting on a clause in the 1996 immigration bill, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court with instructions to dismiss it.

The situation of the plantiffs, also known as CSS group, is unique in several ways, immigrant advocates say. First, the number of immigrants who almost overnight became undocumented is huge -- as many as 300,000 nationwide.

Secondly, courts already have ruled that many in the group were victims of erroneous treatment by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. What has dragged on in litigation for almost a decade is precisely how to identify the immigrants, and how their plight should be remedied.

And finally, because the immigrants have, by definition, lived in the United States for 16 years or more at this point, they have unusually deep roots here -- and the confidence and resources to organize.

Recently, more than 1,000 of the so-called CSS immigrants met with the lead lawyer in the dismissed case to find out about their future options. The lawyer, Peter Schey, announced plans to file a new lawsuit that includes many of the same immigrants.

And a Houston coalition called ARCA -- Association for Residency and Citizenship of America -- is meeting twice a month and coordinating protests and legal strategies with similar groups nationwide.

"It's not your typical illegal alien or undocumented immigrant that's totally vulnerable," immigration attorney Isaias Torres says. "Because they were given legal status for a period of time, they acclimated to our community."

However, INS spokesman Bill Strassberger sees the CSS group in less distinctive terms.

"Unfortunately, one problem is that a number of individuals who were illegally in the United States are continually trying to find a way to stay in the United States regardless of their legal status," he says.

Nevertheless, INS headquarters has directed its agencies to enforce the immigrants' new status only to a limited degree. Since the decision, Houston officials have begun seizing CSS plaintiffs' work permits, usually when the documents are presented for renewal, or at airport entry points.

INS spokeswoman Kristi Barrows in Houston stresses, however, that the agency is not seeking out the permits, or starting deportation proceedings for CSS immigrants.

There are no records showing how many CSS work permits have been revoked so far, Barrows says.

For Laura and other immigrants like her, however, losing her work permit has many of the same effects as a deportation notice.

When her employer checks work permits this June, he will probably fire her, Laura says. Partly because a court ruled the INS had wrongly turned people like her away, and because she's now been here 17 years, she admits it never occurred to her she might have to leave.

"We had faith the lawsuit wasn't going to fail," she says. "I'm buying a house. My children were born here. They don't even speak Spanish."