Those who try to help employees obtain legal residency get caught in a bureaucratic tangle that can take years to unravel and carries some risk.

By Anna Gorman
Times Staff Writer

Business owner Tom Nogradi said he wanted to do the right thing. So when his employees admitted they were undocumented and asked for help applying for green cards, he agreed to sponsor them.

But things didn't go as expected. Immigration agents raided Nogradi's Valencia company in 2000, looking for illegal workers. He lost 15 employees.

"We were trying to do what we were supposed to do, and this was the result," said Nogradi, whose business manufactures cables for the aerospace and robotics industries. "I thought that was a slap in the face."

Lucila Rodriguez and her brother, Bernardino, were among those arrested but fought their deportation. Lucila, 36, finally got her green card last month — 10 years after submitting her paperwork. Bernardino became a legal permanent resident in June.

"It took too much time," said Bernardino, 32, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, and now serves as production manager at Nogradi's plant. "But now I feel like I won the lottery … I don't have to hide from the police or immigration."

Knowing they are unlikely to face fines, many business owners and homeowners regularly hire illegal immigrants as cooks, gardeners, maids, farmworkers and janitors. That has drawn the ire of some politicians, while at the same time underscoring the country's dependence on undocumented labor and triggering proposals for a temporary guest-worker program.

Some employers, however, want their workers to be legal. But helping their employees navigate arcane government bureaucracies to become legal residents isn't easy — or cheap.

"It's extremely burdensome," said Scott Taylor, who owns a Ventura County landscaping company and filed paperwork on behalf of one of his employees in 2001. "It's absolutely insane that it takes this long."

Taylor said he needed reliable, hardworking employees, and immigrants were often his only option.

"I cannot find non-Hispanic, Anglo employees who are willing to do anything," Taylor said. "The work ethic is not anywhere near necessary to sustain a business."

Anti-illegal immigration groups disagree, arguing that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from willing U.S. workers and shouldn't have the opportunity to stay in the country permanently.

"There are plenty of Americans who have low-level skills or education who are either in the labor market or have dropped out altogether," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Employers should be sanctioned for hiring illegal immigrants, Krikorian said. "They are not doing the right thing," he said. "They are doing the wrong thing."

The process for foreign workers to get green cards is complicated and involves three federal departments: Labor, State and Homeland Security.

Under the law, a business can hire a permanent foreign worker if it can demonstrate to the Labor Department that there are no qualified, willing and able Americans available and that the hire won't bring down wages of similar U.S. workers.

"Our overall goal is to give U.S. workers a first crack at jobs created by the U.S. economy," said John R. Beverly, an administrator in the Department of Labor.

That agency streamlined and sped up its foreign labor certification process last year by allowing employers to apply online without initially providing supporting documentation. But some attorneys said they were still waiting for decisions on cases submitted before the change took effect.

"It really frustrates employers and employees," said attorney Elsie Hui Arias. "It just seems that they arbitrarily pick up a box and start processing them."

The department acknowledges that there is a backlog of cases going back several years, but officials said they planned to be fully caught up by September 2007.

Angel Rangel, who owns a furniture manufacturing company in Long Beach, filed an application with the Labor Department in 2001 on behalf of his employee, Juvenal Segovia, 34. The last he heard from the department was about six months ago, when Rangel received a letter asking if he still wanted to proceed with the case.

Rangel, who is a naturalized citizen from Mexico, said he wants Segovia to have the same opportunities he has had. "He's got a good character," Rangel said. "It's hard to find good people."

For his part, Segovia said, he pays taxes and just wants a green card so he can work legally without fearing deportation.

"I've been doing everything right," he said. "Why can't I get it?"

Once the Labor Department approves the foreign worker certification, the employer then must file an immigrant visa petition for the employee. Based on quotas set by Congress, 140,000 visas are available for foreign workers and their families each year, but only 5,000 of those are set aside annually for unskilled workers, such as dishwashers or housekeepers. The immigrant visas are also limited by country, so the wait for an unskilled worker from Mexico, for example, may be five years.

The foreign worker can then apply for a green card through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But workers here illegally must do so from their native country. That creates the biggest obstacle.

Immigrants who have lived illegally in the U.S. for more than one year and then leave the country are barred by law from reentering for 10 years. There is, however, an exception for immigrants who submitted specific paperwork before April 30, 2001.

While waiting, undocumented immigrants might get arrested or deported. That's what happened to Alma Veronica Flores, 33, whose boss at the Santa Ana beauty salon where she works is sponsoring her. Flores said she unknowingly signed an application for asylum, and an immigration judge denied it and ordered her to leave the country. She is appealing.

"I can't sleep," said Flores, who is from Guadalajara. "I am always thinking about what is going to happen."

Many undocumented immigrants get tired of waiting and "take the easy way out" by getting married to a U.S. citizen, said John R. Perry, an attorney. "It's really hard for people to do it the right way."

It's also hard for employers to do it the right way because they don't want to risk possible sanctions for knowingly employing illegal workers, attorneys said.

"It's to your advantage to keep them illegal because then there is no paperwork going back and forth between you and the government," said Carl Shusterman, an immigration attorney.

Though Immigration and Customs Enforcement focuses its work-site enforcement on potential terrorist targets such as airports and power plants, spokeswoman Virginia Kice said any employer who hires permanent foreign workers before the paperwork is completed is violating the law. "These labor certifications are not supposed to be done after the fact," she said.

Immigration attorneys counter that it is unrealistic to expect employers to find workers in foreign countries and then wait years before actually hiring them. "Nobody is going to file for unskilled workers who they have never met," said Yeu Hong, an immigration attorney. "They're not going to hire a nanny in Mexico."

When Lucila Rodriguez saw the immigration agents enter Cicoil Corp. the day of the raid, she knew she was in trouble. She tried to sneak out, but agents blocked every exit.

"It scared me," she said. "I thought of my son. He was only 5 years old."

Rodriguez, who is now a lead assembler, said the arrest made her even more determined to get her green card. "I knew I had to keep fighting," said Rodriguez, who spent roughly $7,000 on attorney and application fees.

For Nogradi, the raid made him become more diligent about making sure his workers are legal. He now participates in a government program that verifies the legal status of job applicants. But now, he said, it takes weeks to find a new employee, even though he offers benefits and $8 an hour.

"It is 10 times more difficult for me to find people as a result," he said.