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A family is exiled from the U.S.
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08-20-2011, 01:47 PM
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Joined in Aug 2010
533 posts
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...-S-1974919.php
REYNOSA, Mexico — Tom and Yedid Kobylecky now wish they'd stayed silent, quietly living a middle-class life in the suburbs of Chicago and keeping her illegal immigrant status a family secret.
But Yedid's parents in Cuernavaca, Mexico, were struggling to keep a taqueria stand going despite her diabetic father's sore-ridden feet and her mother's failing legs. As entrepreneurs, neither qualified for any government medical care. Yedid wired money from cleaning and baby-sitting jobs to help them buy medicines, but longed to be able to travel to see them.
And so, four years after meeting at the Home Depot where he worked, three years after marrying, a year after their son Teddy was born, they decided to petition for her visa.
“We just wanted to be an honest family, and I didn't like staying in the shadows,” Tom said.
Yedid was not only denied, but slapped with a 10-year ban on applying after admitting she'd stayed in the United States more than a year after crossing illegally — in her case twice.
“Now she's considered a felon because she crossed the border twice,” Tom said. “She's put next to human smugglers and drug traffickers and all that good stuff. ... We thought the government was, you know, sympathetic toward families.”
In order to stay together, the family moved to Reynosa, across the border from the Rio Grande Valley, allowing him to work in the U.S. and commute each night to see his family in Mexico.
Though no one tracks statistics that reflect the Kobyleckys' situation, immigration attorneys and other advocates say their situation is not unique.
Once she was deported, lawyers couldn't help. Federal representatives couldn't — or on principle wouldn't — help.
“Immigration reform must ultimately be about improving our system for legal immigration, not about creating new benefits for illegal aliens,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn wrote back.
A pardon request to President Barack Obama came back in less than a week with a little sticky note attached: “Non-Resident.”
Internet immigration forums told them their best bet was to move to a border town.
They now live in a small home in Reynosa, where Yedid waits with 5-year-old Teddy and 1-year-old Janet, born in Mexico but a U.S. citizen. Yedid buys groceries at the main shopping plaza, the site of several drug cartel shootouts. There's no work for her in Reynosa, whereas in Chicago, she said, there's work for everyone if they look hard enough.
Several times a week, Tom grits his teeth through the long lines at the international bridge, telling his story over and over to the inspectors at the Customs booths. He hauls ethanol up to Texas' Coastal Bend during the time away, all the while fearing for his family. There was one night when he and Yedid cowered with the children as the walls shook from gunfire and grenade blasts.
She's no more closer to her family in Cuernavaca than he is to his in Chicago.
“I feel like I'm nowhere — far away,” she said. “We don't celebrate anything, because he works Christmas. I stay home with my kids.”
Tom has a 13-year-old daughter from a previous relationship whom he recently visited for the first time in two years.
Now 33, he will be 40 before he can think about them living as a family in the United States. Teddy will be a freshman in high school.
U.S. Immigration law is notoriously complex. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Tim Counts said its intricacies likely have surpassed that of the tax code.
Had the couple consulted a lawyer, they would have learned their plan was naïve.
“If she'd spoken to an attorney and said, ‘I'm going to go and come back,' the attorney would have said ‘Noooo!'” immigration attorney Laurel Scott said.
Instead, the Kobyleckys prepared the paperwork, which took them about a year, sent the package and got summoned to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
They flew there and stayed at a motel so she could get her required physical, submit her biometric data and be interviewed. They spent about $1,000, plus airfare, in what they thought was “coming clean and doing the right thing.”
When Yedid was deported, they had no Plan B. Tom boarded the plane back to Chicago alone, shaking as he said good-bye to Yedid and Teddy.
Counts has statistics that show more than 80 percent of couples applying through Juarez are able to get legal status for the foreign-born spouse by claiming that refused entry would cause “extreme hardship” for the U.S.-born spouse.
It's presumed any family will face hardships with one or both living in a foreign nation; the hardships must be “extreme.”
But the Kobyleckys didn't get that far.
Under provisions of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, staying in the United States illegally more than 180 days means a three-year ban on re-entry. Staying more than a year means a 10-year ban. A “9C” admission to being a repeat offender — staying more than a year, going and coming back illegally again — essentially bars one from even applying for a waiver for at least 10 years.
“The law is very strict on 9C and a lot of attorneys think it's too strict,” Scott said. “It's too much. It's too severe.
“Immigration law is really piecemeal; it's been revised over time by different sessions of Congress and they don't read it first before they change it, and so there's a lot of glaring inconsistencies. You can have a convicted felon who's eligible to apply for a waiver because it was 15 years ago ... and then you have somebody like this woman, she's not even eligible to apply. ... And they won't even listen to her story.”
State Department statistics from 2010 show that while more than 22,000 visa applicants were ineligible due to the six-month or year-or-more unlawful presence, less than 1 percent — 2,295 out of 306,160 — fell into the “9C” category.
But for those who do, the situation is harrowing, particularly when the escalating drug war violence means even family are reluctant to cross the border to visit in Mexico, isolating not only the Mexican spouse but the U.S.-born children.
The Kobyleckys must make decisions soon about school for Teddy, whose bright chatter switches easily between Spanish and English, and Tom is daily reminded he's a foreigner.
Several activists who work in immigrant communities said they knew of families in similar situations, but said the families didn't want to talk about it for fear of burning themselves or relatives. Fear and distrust of the system is rampant.
One online forum for applicants going through Juárez had messages hinting that crossing again illegally may be the best option: “if you don't see anything good is going to happen ... just brake the law.”
Lupita Sanchez, an activist at Proyecto Juan Diego in Cameron Park, recounted how a 65-year-old woman facing a one-year ban recently lost faith in the system and paid a Matamoros smuggler to bring her back through the sewers underneath Brownsville.
“An over-65-year-old crawling through the sewer. It's a sad story.” Sanchez said.
For a while, Tom got active, marching for immigration reform with groups such as La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, a social services and community organizing group based in San Juan.
He said he's now just disillusioned.
Juanita Valdez-Cox, of LUPE, said immigrant advocates had expected more from Obama. She said during the next election cycle they were going to be skeptical of his promises.
“Comprehensive Immigration Reform” as they see it would allow those who have already been here a certain number of years a path toward legal status.
“We're not expecting statements any more. We're hoping that now it's just action,” she said. “We're talking about the lives of 11 or 12 million folks.”
But those who want stronger immigration enforcement aren't going to give up efforts to block anything that to them sounds like a repeat of the 1986 amnesty.
“The American public has made it clear that they don't believe that amnesty is the proper response to illegal immigration,” Federation of American Immigration Reform spokesman Ira Mehlman said. “They fundamentally reject the idea that as a tradeoff to even getting the government to make a promise that they'll try harder next time, they have to cut a deal with the people who broke our laws.”
He added that the 1986 amnesty was presented as a one-time deal, not, “We're never going to do this again until we do this again.”
REYNOSA, Mexico — Tom and Yedid Kobylecky now wish they'd stayed silent, quietly living a middle-class life in the suburbs of Chicago and keeping her illegal immigrant status a family secret.
But Yedid's parents in Cuernavaca, Mexico, were struggling to keep a taqueria stand going despite her diabetic father's sore-ridden feet and her mother's failing legs. As entrepreneurs, neither qualified for any government medical care. Yedid wired money from cleaning and baby-sitting jobs to help them buy medicines, but longed to be able to travel to see them.
And so, four years after meeting at the Home Depot where he worked, three years after marrying, a year after their son Teddy was born, they decided to petition for her visa.
“We just wanted to be an honest family, and I didn't like staying in the shadows,” Tom said.
Yedid was not only denied, but slapped with a 10-year ban on applying after admitting she'd stayed in the United States more than a year after crossing illegally — in her case twice.
“Now she's considered a felon because she crossed the border twice,” Tom said. “She's put next to human smugglers and drug traffickers and all that good stuff. ... We thought the government was, you know, sympathetic toward families.”
In order to stay together, the family moved to Reynosa, across the border from the Rio Grande Valley, allowing him to work in the U.S. and commute each night to see his family in Mexico.
Though no one tracks statistics that reflect the Kobyleckys' situation, immigration attorneys and other advocates say their situation is not unique.
Once she was deported, lawyers couldn't help. Federal representatives couldn't — or on principle wouldn't — help.
“Immigration reform must ultimately be about improving our system for legal immigration, not about creating new benefits for illegal aliens,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn wrote back.
A pardon request to President Barack Obama came back in less than a week with a little sticky note attached: “Non-Resident.”
Internet immigration forums told them their best bet was to move to a border town.
They now live in a small home in Reynosa, where Yedid waits with 5-year-old Teddy and 1-year-old Janet, born in Mexico but a U.S. citizen. Yedid buys groceries at the main shopping plaza, the site of several drug cartel shootouts. There's no work for her in Reynosa, whereas in Chicago, she said, there's work for everyone if they look hard enough.
Several times a week, Tom grits his teeth through the long lines at the international bridge, telling his story over and over to the inspectors at the Customs booths. He hauls ethanol up to Texas' Coastal Bend during the time away, all the while fearing for his family. There was one night when he and Yedid cowered with the children as the walls shook from gunfire and grenade blasts.
She's no more closer to her family in Cuernavaca than he is to his in Chicago.
“I feel like I'm nowhere — far away,” she said. “We don't celebrate anything, because he works Christmas. I stay home with my kids.”
Tom has a 13-year-old daughter from a previous relationship whom he recently visited for the first time in two years.
Now 33, he will be 40 before he can think about them living as a family in the United States. Teddy will be a freshman in high school.
U.S. Immigration law is notoriously complex. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Tim Counts said its intricacies likely have surpassed that of the tax code.
Had the couple consulted a lawyer, they would have learned their plan was naïve.
“If she'd spoken to an attorney and said, ‘I'm going to go and come back,' the attorney would have said ‘Noooo!'” immigration attorney Laurel Scott said.
Instead, the Kobyleckys prepared the paperwork, which took them about a year, sent the package and got summoned to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
They flew there and stayed at a motel so she could get her required physical, submit her biometric data and be interviewed. They spent about $1,000, plus airfare, in what they thought was “coming clean and doing the right thing.”
When Yedid was deported, they had no Plan B. Tom boarded the plane back to Chicago alone, shaking as he said good-bye to Yedid and Teddy.
Counts has statistics that show more than 80 percent of couples applying through Juarez are able to get legal status for the foreign-born spouse by claiming that refused entry would cause “extreme hardship” for the U.S.-born spouse.
It's presumed any family will face hardships with one or both living in a foreign nation; the hardships must be “extreme.”
But the Kobyleckys didn't get that far.
Under provisions of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, staying in the United States illegally more than 180 days means a three-year ban on re-entry. Staying more than a year means a 10-year ban. A “9C” admission to being a repeat offender — staying more than a year, going and coming back illegally again — essentially bars one from even applying for a waiver for at least 10 years.
“The law is very strict on 9C and a lot of attorneys think it's too strict,” Scott said. “It's too much. It's too severe.
“Immigration law is really piecemeal; it's been revised over time by different sessions of Congress and they don't read it first before they change it, and so there's a lot of glaring inconsistencies. You can have a convicted felon who's eligible to apply for a waiver because it was 15 years ago ... and then you have somebody like this woman, she's not even eligible to apply. ... And they won't even listen to her story.”
State Department statistics from 2010 show that while more than 22,000 visa applicants were ineligible due to the six-month or year-or-more unlawful presence, less than 1 percent — 2,295 out of 306,160 — fell into the “9C” category.
But for those who do, the situation is harrowing, particularly when the escalating drug war violence means even family are reluctant to cross the border to visit in Mexico, isolating not only the Mexican spouse but the U.S.-born children.
The Kobyleckys must make decisions soon about school for Teddy, whose bright chatter switches easily between Spanish and English, and Tom is daily reminded he's a foreigner.
Several activists who work in immigrant communities said they knew of families in similar situations, but said the families didn't want to talk about it for fear of burning themselves or relatives. Fear and distrust of the system is rampant.
One online forum for applicants going through Juárez had messages hinting that crossing again illegally may be the best option: “if you don't see anything good is going to happen ... just brake the law.”
Lupita Sanchez, an activist at Proyecto Juan Diego in Cameron Park, recounted how a 65-year-old woman facing a one-year ban recently lost faith in the system and paid a Matamoros smuggler to bring her back through the sewers underneath Brownsville.
“An over-65-year-old crawling through the sewer. It's a sad story.” Sanchez said.
For a while, Tom got active, marching for immigration reform with groups such as La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, a social services and community organizing group based in San Juan.
He said he's now just disillusioned.
Juanita Valdez-Cox, of LUPE, said immigrant advocates had expected more from Obama. She said during the next election cycle they were going to be skeptical of his promises.
“Comprehensive Immigration Reform” as they see it would allow those who have already been here a certain number of years a path toward legal status.
“We're not expecting statements any more. We're hoping that now it's just action,” she said. “We're talking about the lives of 11 or 12 million folks.”
But those who want stronger immigration enforcement aren't going to give up efforts to block anything that to them sounds like a repeat of the 1986 amnesty.
“The American public has made it clear that they don't believe that amnesty is the proper response to illegal immigration,” Federation of American Immigration Reform spokesman Ira Mehlman said. “They fundamentally reject the idea that as a tradeoff to even getting the government to make a promise that they'll try harder next time, they have to cut a deal with the people who broke our laws.”
He added that the 1986 amnesty was presented as a one-time deal, not, “We're never going to do this again until we do this again.”
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