As the deadline passed last week for migrant farm workers to seek U.S. residency status under a special amnesty program, the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that it had received an astonishing 1.2 million applications, four times the number expected. Normally, about 600,000 aliens come to the U.S. each year to pick crops and work on farms. To qualify for amnesty, the aliens must show they did such work for 90 days between May 1, 1985, and May 1, 1986. So it seems that at least half the applications were phony.
Part of the applicant deluge was attributed to nonmigrant aliens who failed to qualify for the stricter residency regulations in the amnesty program passed by Congress in 1986. The deadline for that program was last May 4. Many who could not meet the test apparently acted on rumors that INS was not checking documents thoroughly for the special agricultural amnesty.
Shady operators offered false papers for fees ranging from $200 to $2,000. Employers have sometimes willingly falsified papers to make sure their source of cheap migrant workers remains available. While the extent of fraud is debatable, its existence is not. “We had applicants flying in from New York,” says Mariela Melero, Houston district INS spokeswoman. Some supposed farm workers, when interviewed by INS, described picking chili peppers with ladders or stooping to harvest grapefruit.