Immigrants Opting Not To Renew Their Green Cards
By Scott Brooks
WASHINGTON – When the time comes for many of New Bedford’s 25,000 immigrants to renew their green cards, the local Immigrants’ Assistance Center is telling them not to.
Because of heightened security measures aimed at foreign-born residents, checking in with the government can be a high-risk activity for some immigrants, the privately operated center warns. Government background checks can produce criminal records that may date back decades, with positive checks resulting in deportation.
The situation is giving immigrants reason to think twice before renewing their cards.
“These people are afraid of becoming citizens because of something in their past,” said Helena Marques, executive director of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center. “It’s like a catch-22. Some people still have old green cards, and they’re afraid to renew it.”
Every individual who renews a green card is subject to a criminal records check by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the new Department of Homeland Security. Screeners look for convictions carrying a sentence of one year or more, regardless of time served. Anyone whose record raises a red flag is issued a notice to appear in court and will face deportation.
Fred Watt, a New Bedford attorney specializing in immigration law, said that lately, green card renewal is one of the top reasons that people come to see him. In the last year, he said, he has seen the number of criminal background cases start to rise.
As a general rule, Mr. Watt said, most of the crimes on immigrant records are “not hideous ones.” Mostly, he said, background checks will turn up records of drug or alcohol convictions. There are also frequent instances of domestic crimes — for example, violating a restraining order.
Some immigrants do not know that their old convictions can jeopardize their status, Mr. Watt said. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he has been warning his clients that their past may start to catch up with them.
“Many of them know they’re sitting on a ticking time bomb, but there’s nothing they can really do about it,” he said.
Mr. Watt said some immigrants can successfully lobby the courts to expunge, or at least revise, their record. Judges are frequently sympathetic to their claims, he said. Another option may be to move for a new trial.
At the Immigrants’ Assistance Center, concerned immigrants can send away for background checks with the state government’s Criminal History Systems Board in Chelsea. The checks take between one and two weeks.
Immigrants who opt not to renew their cards are often ineligible for government aid. Without an updated green card, which provides proof that they are in the country legally and eligible to work, immigrants cannot receive unemployment benefits.
Employersare required to demand green cards from foreign-born applicants, and they may refuse to hire immigrants whose cards have expired. Mr. Watt said this was never as much of a concern before the laws began to change in the mid-’90s, when Congress passed the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
That act lowered the minimum sentence required for deportation from five years to just one. The law was retroactive, which meant that immigrants convicted of crimes that were once overlooked were now at risk of having to leave the country.
The changes signal a national concern about allowing criminals to make their home in the United States, said Bill Straussberger, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
“Even if they’re a permanent resident, they need to maintain at least a standard of behavior,” he said. “The feeling is if an individual in the United States violates the laws of the country, they forfeit their right to remain here.”
Last June, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition issued a warning to immigrant service organizations across the state that their clients may face deportation when trying to access immigration benefits. The coalition reported learning of “a couple of people [who] have recently been detained while attempting to upgrade their status at INS.”
“The law requires aliens to renew their green card. I certainly can’t advise somebody not to renew it,” Mr. Watt said. “Having said that, I’m not aware of any punishment for failing to renew, and if there is one I haven’t seen it enforced.”
Mr. Straussberger said he suspects people could get away with not renewing their card, but he expected they would run into trouble when traveling or seeking government services.
“Those who find themselves in proceedings do so as result of their own personal behavior in violation of the law,” he said. “The best way to avoid the problem is not to commit the crime in the first place.”
Green cards expire every 10 years. Residents can remove themselves from the 10-year cycle by applying for citizenship, although Mr. Watt said many immigrants in the New Bedford area have not bothered to do so.
For years, he noted, green card-holders shared most of the rights afforded to American citizens, save for the right to vote. New Bedford’s Portuguese immigrants, who did not have the right to vote in their homeland, never saw a need to gain full-fledged citizenship, he said.
More than 300,000 immigrants entered the state during the 1990s, according to the immigrant coalition. Ms. Marques of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center said nearly 500 legal immigrants in Bristol County were deported over the last six years.
Published in The New Bedford Standard Times, in Massachusetts.
