This time, immigration takes center stage
Immigration has once again marched into the center of the room and is screaming, “Pay attention to me!”
We’ve seen this before. We’ve pretended to take him seriously, proposed a few bills, chewed them up, spit them out, told him we were “working on it” and then pushed him back in the corner with a promise to “get back to it in the future.”
And Immigration waited expectantly while health care reform and tax reform and nuclear games with North Korea were the cosseted guests at the cocktail party, while he hung out in the kitchen, making dinner for everyone even though he didn’t have work authorization.
But now, Immigration has lost his patience with these delaying tactics. He is not in the mood to hear about “compromise” that never happens or quick fixes that can be undone by the next president.
And Immigration is also a bit annoyed at some conversation overheard at the cocktail party, language that made it seem as if only one country, Norway, was going to be getting any visa action in the near future. Troubling, even though the host of the party said he never made those comments about blondes.
Too much heat, too little light. So let me shed some light of my own on some real world problems, two separate cases that defy the usual stereotypes employed by the extremes at the party.
About six years ago, a couple came to my office. The wife was a big, beautiful Italian-American with a booming laugh and rich brown eyes. Her husband was small, quiet, and had crossed the border from Guatemala years before, without permission.
They had a two year old little girl, big eyes like mommy, quiet like daddy. We did the marriage petition, and after it was approved prepared to do the next step to help him get his “papers.” But one day I got a call from “Anna” telling me she’d been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and had a few months ... very few.
She said “I want my baby to have her daddy with her when I’m gone,” and we rushed to finish everything in time. But time was unkind, and Anna died before we could obtain “Carlo’s” visa.
That is normally the end of the story — no U.S. citizen wife, no green card. And Carlo watched as Anna’s mother, father and sister fought to strip him of custody of his daughter, because he was “illegal.”
And then, in talking with another immigration lawyer, we searched through the rather arcane subsections of immigration statutes and regs, and came up with an idea: Anna’s death was her sacrifice, even despite herself, and this should have been enough punishment to exact on a man whose only crime was walking across the border without permission, and falling in love without the right papers.
“Hardship,” a legal term of art, became a tangible and personal reality. At least we hoped it would be seen that way.
This week, we got a letter in the mail telling us Carlo will get his visa, and won’t be separated from his daughter for the decade normally required by law of those who crossed into our country illegally. And he can now tell a judge that he will have his green card, which never mattered to his little girl but apparently mattered to some heartless in-laws.
The same day that Carlo got his approval notice, I had a hearing with another client who’d lived in the U.S. for 23 years. She arrived in this country from Mexico without permission, had missed an immigration hearing because she never received the notice to show up in Baltimore, and was ordered deported in absentia.
Not knowing she had that sword of Damocles hanging over her head, she met a man, fell in love, married him and had four children. Her husband and children are all U.S. citizens, and each one of them has a severe medical disability. “Maria” is the emotional, physical and mental support for all of them, but she is the only one without a right to live in this country.
Or rather, she was the only one. On Tuesday, an immigration judge in Philadelphia measured the equities in this case, weighing a woman’s illegal entry two and a half decades ago against her role as the heart, soul and mind of a very needy American family. If she was deported, I argued to the judge, four children and their father would have their lives destroyed to — what? — punish a 25-year-old trespass that harmed no one?
The judge agreed, and gave Maria her green card.
There are times when our government is faithful to its animating, ennobling spirit. I’ve seen it happen up close.
There are other times when lives, both American and foreign, are used as game pieces for entertainment at some political cocktail party.
Well, I just say over. heard Immigration the party’s