LV immigrants hold protest over revoked work permits

Tuesday, Jan. 12, 1999 | 11:28 a.m.

Eleven-year-old Maira Prado stood among nearly 100 protesters in front of the Foley Federal Building Monday morning holding a sign declaring "Equal justice for late amnesty immigrants."

She may have been young to take up a picket, but she has a personal interest in the issue.

"I want to stay here. I made my life here," Prado said. Her mother is one of 5,000 local immigrants whose work permits were revoked last year after a federal appeals court ruled against them.

The court denied permits to immigrants who did not report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service within the allowed time after the 1986 Amnesty Law was passed by Congress permitting all illegal aliens to remain if they reported to INS.

Most of those affected own homes and have worked and lived in Nevada for 10 years, said Malena Burnett, who heads Fair Treatment For Immigrants, a local advocacy group. They call themselves "Late Amnesty Class" immigrants.

Many didn't report, fearing they fell into a class excluded from amnesty -- those who left the country during amnesty period but returned.

The advocacy group was formed after the appellate court ruling into effect Sept. 30 to seek other ways to keep the immigrants in their adopted homeland.

On Monday, the protest -- the group's third -- demanded the same Temporary Protected Status recently granted to 150,000 immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua, who cannot return home because of the devastation left by Hurricane Mitch.

Burnett says the late-amnesty immigrants' problem could, and should, be resolved by an executive order, as was done for the Central American refugees.

"If they're doing something humanitarian for new arrivals, why not do something for people who have been living here for 10 years?" Burnett said. "We don't oppose help to Nicaragua or Honduras, but what about people who are suffering here? These families have children who are born here."

Children of those immigrants who were born here are American citizens. However, their parents face deportation if they are unable to have their permits reinstated.

The protest included rehearsed dramas taking place in front of a portrait of a weeping Statue of Liberty.