In the wake of President Obama’s announcement last week of executive action to temporarily shield some four million undocumented immigrants from deportation, Redlands Christian Migrant Association is planning to begin offering an Immigration Assistance Program. Immigrant advocates applaud the President’s action, but say they’re worried con artists have already begun using the newly announced national immigration policy to target Florida’s 632,000 undocumented immigrants.
Scammers can lure in victims claiming that for a fee, they can help immigrants with government paperwork to apply for deferred action or for a work permit.
“I was stunned to hear that on the Spanish radio stations they’re advertising already,” said Redlands Christian Migrant Association Executive Director Barbara Mainster. “They’re saying, ‘come in. I’m an immigrant office with 20 years’ experience. We can help you fill out…’ We don’t even know what forms they have to have yet!”
Part of the problem is that immigrants may confuse the role of notary publics in the U.S. with notarias in Mexico. “In Spanish, a notario is closer to a lawyer and so notary publics here frequently take advantage and the parents see, “Notary Public” and they think, ‘oh, it’s like in my country,’ and they say, ‘you know, you don’t have documents, but there are ways we can help you do this,’” said Mainster.
“They collect thousands and thousands of dollars sometimes and make people think that in fact they’re going to be able to get documents and they don’t.”
Government applications through the new immigration rules won’t be available for six months and Mainster urges undocumented immigrants not to pay anyone to help them navigate the new system now. She said the best thing undocumented immigrants can do now is begin collecting documents to prove they’ve lived in the U.S. for at least the last five years.
Mainster says she saw this same type of scamming occur in 2007, when former President George W. Bush was urging congressional action on immigration reform. That effort died in the Senate, but that’s when RCMA staff first began putting together an Immigration Assistance Program.
The initiative will run through a separate corporation currently being established as a 501c3 non-profit and will be administered through the 75 centers RCMA operates throughout the state.
The Redlands Christian Migrant Association provides child care and other services for migrant farmworker families in 21 Florida counties.
