Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1990. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - SATURDAY December 1, 1990 Edition: FINAL Section: NEWS Page: A2 Word Count: 595
Dawn Garcia, David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writers
Chronicle staff writer Steve Kettmann contributed to this report
TEXT:
Bay Area groups representing diverse constituencies such as AIDS and gay rights advocates, Salvadoran refugees, Filipino veterans and Irish immigrants yesterday hailed a major overhaul of the immigration laws.
The measure, signed by President Bush on Thursday, removes several controversial provisions that had been used for decades to restrict entry to the United States. Immigrant and civil rights advocates had long sought these changes, with Bay Area organizations at the forefront of years of lobbying. "It's long overdue," said Marc Van Der Hout, an immigration lawyer in San Francisco who filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against the federal government charging that Salvadoran refugees were being wrongly deported.
The Immigration Reform Act of 1990 will increase overall immigration from 540,000 in 1989 to 700,000 people a year for the next three years and stabilize the annual total at 675,000 after that.
FILIPINO VETERANS
Included in the law are provisions to reunify families, strike down 1950s-era immigration bans on Communists and gays, and increase immigration of skilled workers and Europeans.
The law also allows Filipinos who served in the U.S. military in World War II to short-cut the long citizenship process.
Bienvenido Galicia, 65, a guard at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, was almost overcome with joy upon hearing of the news yesterday.
"Finally, now I can bring my family to the United States," said Galicia, who fought side by side with U.S. soldiers between 1941 and 1946. Galicia is one of thousands of eligible veterans, many in the Bay Area.
'INITIAL VICTORY'
"It's an initial victory for the Filipino veterans who have waited so long to be vindicated," said Alex A. Esclamado, publisher of the Philippine News, based in South San Francisco.
In 1987, Congress added HIV infection to the list of medical conditions for which people could be excluded from the country. The exclusion caused an uproar at the Sixth International Conference on AIDS, which was held in San Francisco in June.
Dozens of organizations boycotted the event in protest. Critics said the policy was based on fear and prejudice rather than legitimate public health concerns.
The law leaves it up to government health officials to determine what diseases belong on the list, and federal authorities have said that HIV infection should not be grounds for exclusion.
Gay and lesbian rights advocates are also thrilled with the removal of a decades-old provision that allowed the INS to refuse entry to people with a "sexual deviation." Although the law was rarely enforced, gay groups viewed its continued existence as an insult and lobbied for its removal.
For the more than 50,000 Salvadorans in the Bay Area, the new immigration act confers long-sought government recognition that human rights violations continue in their homeland.
The law grants temporary protected status to Salvadorans who have lived in the United States since September 19, delaying deportation orders for 18 months.
For years, Salvadorans fleeing civil war violence -- including right-wing death squads -- have fought deportation. According to the National Lawyers Guild, the INS has denied Salvadorans political asylum in 97 percent of the cases.
The law also earmarks 40,000 visas a year for people from 24 countries -- many in Europe -- whose homelands had suffered under the 1965 immigration law. It reserves at least 16,000 of the visas for Irish immigrants, making Ireland the only country with a guaranteed number of visas.
CAPTION: PHOTO
Bienvenido Galicia, a Museum of Modern Art guard, will be a U.S. citizen because of a new law/BY LIZ HAFALIA/THE CHRONICLE
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