Refugees El Salvador

Immigrant rights advocates filed court papers this week to include the large Los Angeles Salvadoran community in a recent court decision requiring the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to waive fees for impoverished Salvadoran refugees applying for temporary haven in the United States. Federal District Court Judge David F.

After months of protests from immigrant rights groups, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on Wednesday instituted a substantial fee reduction for a program granting Salvadoran refugees up to 18 months of temporary haven in the United States. Since it started in January, advocacy groups across the nation have criticized the INS for charging prohibitively high fees for the program, thus denying many refugees the chance to legally live and work in this country.

An immigrant rights group filed a class-action suit Thursday on behalf of thousands of Salvadoran refugees, claiming the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is charging prohibitively high fees to refugees applying for temporary safe haven in this country.

A federal program granting temporary haven to thousands of Salvadoran refugees has drawn a dismal response in Los Angeles largely because of high registration fees and a fear among immigrants that they could risk deportation by applying, immigrant rights advocates say. Since the program began in January, 5,200 people have registered with the U.S.

A judge gave final approval to a settlement that blocks deportation of as many as 500,000 refugees from war-torn El Salvador and Guatemala and allows them to reopen their cases seeking political asylum. The Bush Administration and refugee groups agreed in December to resolve a suit filed in 1985 that accused the federal government of denying asylum on the basis of improper political considerations.

"I had a home, but I left it because of the trouble," Ricardo said. "When I returned to the home with my family, we found it had been destroyed, erased during fighting between guerrillas and the army." Like many of the 800,000 Salvadorans in the United States--with as many as 70,000 in Orange County--Ricardo fled his country because a 10-year-old civil war had made it impossible for his family to stay in one place and make a living.

In a move likely to draw the ire of Salvadoran activists, officials at Los Angeles' oldest church have decided to stop housing Central American refugees and other homeless people overnight--ending a key element of the controversial declaration of sanctuary at the downtown Roman Catholic parish.

Eighty poor immigrants are living in their own apartments instead of on the streets this Christmas because a priest and his parish decided that it takes more than charitable donations to conquer homelessness. Exactly one year ago, Dolores Mission and La Placita churches, the two traditional and overburdened refuges for Los Angeles' homeless Latino immigrants, issued a call to other churches in the city's crowded core to open their doors to those with no place else to go. At St.

When Humberto Ortega went to see federal immigration authorities in Los Angeles several years ago to apply for political asylum, he decided not to show what he considered irrefutable proof of his need to stay here--a left arm mangled, he said, by Guatemalan authorities. Ortega is still so uncomfortable about his left arm--crooked and jutting at an awkward angle--that he is hesitant about being photographed.

In an unprecedented pact, the federal government agreed Wednesday to reconsider tens of thousands of cases involving Salvadoran and Guatemalan nationals whose requests for political asylum in the United States have been denied. Ending a five-year legal battle, the government also promised to stay many deportations and agreed that "discrimination . . . based on nationality is improper" in asylum judgments.