Another deportation at the hands of a cruel and callous INS

[Sapphocrat]

Usually, immigration stories that burn my hide are those involving same-sex couples (obviously, as I am one-half of a binational same-sex couple whose lives have often been rendered nearly impossible to endure, thanks to discriminatory U.S. immigration law). This time, however, my outrage has been fueled by the story of a very hetero family ripped apart by the same inequitable, arbitrary law:

So, this Russian woman lies her way into the U.S. in 1996, finally gets caught, and now she's being deported. Cut and dried, right?

Wrong. First: She is now married to an American. The couple has a 20-month-old baby. She has been in the U.S. for eight years, and there is nothing in this story to indicate she has ever presented any sort of menace to society. On the contrary, she has been quite a productive member of society.

Now they are deporting her, after holding her in jail for three weeks. They have given her until the end of February to say goodbye to her husband and son. Out of kind-hearted, American generosity? Hardly. In order to keep the INS from deporting her immediately, she had to agree not to appeal her case.

Or, as her husband puts it, "They made her sign away her rights."

Now, before anybody starts lecturing me with "The law is the law -- she broke the law and got what she deserved," consider this story in light of Bush*'s immigration plan.

Consider it in contrast to those brief yet wildly popular periods in which illegal immigrants have been granted full amnesty -- many, I would guess, with fewer ties to the U.S. than an American spouse and baby.

Consider too that any Cuban wiley enough to sneak past the U.S. Coast Guard is granted automatic asylum as soon as s/he hits Florida soil.

Now, where's the justice? Not here:

Teacher freed from jail but must leave U.S. in month

Yana Slobodova came home from jail Tuesday night, but it is a bittersweet and temporary reprieve.

The Russian piano teacher was detained and had been held in an Oakland jail for nearly three weeks because she was living in the United States without authorization. Slobodova could have been deported without the chance to say goodbye to her 20-month-old son, Nikita, and her husband, Alexander Makarchuk. But in order to gain freedom for 30 days, Slobodova promised immigration officials she would not appeal her case any further and to leave the United States by Feb. 27. ... If Slobodova had not agreed to the conditions of her release, she might have been deported to Russia without seeing her family.

While a direct appeal to immigration officials is off the table, Makarchuk said the family will try asking for help from various branches of the federal government: California's congressional delegation, the Department of Homeland Security and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Slobodova, who lives in San Francisco, is from St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1996, while she was single, she entered the United States with documentation stating that she was the wife of a U.S. citizen. Slobodova has since admitted to misrepresenting herself to immigration officials, but she and her husband contend that she was also the victim of fraudulent immigration consultants who gave her the wrong paperwork. Slobodova said she paid $10,000 to immigration consultants, who convinced her she could gain permanent residency based on her extraordinary musical ability.

Upon arriving in the United States, Slobodova began a lengthy process of seeking asylum. She married Makarchuk, a naturalized citizen, in 1999. Her parents successfully sought refugee status as Russian Jews and now live in San Mateo. They helped post Slobodova's $10,000 bond from jail this week.

The much-beloved teacher taught private piano lessons at a performing arts school in San Francisco and at the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View. Dozens of students, parents and friends have written letters to immigration officials attesting to Slobodova's character and the hardship to her family that her deportation would cause. ...

More:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/7822065.htm

Note that word: "hardship." The INS (or whatever the blazes the DHS is calling the new and "improved" INS these days) says (or used to say) that the whole basis of offering familial immigration categories (parental, fraternal, spousal -- and even a category for fiancees!) was to keep families together. It was not uncommon to run across that word, "hardship," all over INS documents and Web pages. (I don't know if they even mention "hardship" now, since the INS is useless to fc and me.)

If this isn't shredding a family unit and creating hardship, then what is?

We are liberals. Nothing is black and white. There are extenuating circumstances in all human events.

This strikes me as an utter travesty.

[Bozola]

1. Meanwhile, Ken Lay is still a free man.

[Sapphocrat]

6. While Martha Stewart may end up in prison.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Similar story in Portland

about a German woman who WAS deported abruptly without her husband and 13-month old baby when she came to straighten out paperwork that had been erroneously recommended to her.

After Congressional intervention, she was let back in, but her situation FINALLY started a public outcry against an INS office that had been routinely deporting and mistreating Asians at the airport for flimsy reasons. Even the family values crowd could see the problem here.

[Sapphocrat]

7. There was a huge fraud scandal here...

...in the S.F. Bay Area last year, with thousands of (mostly Asian) immigrants who thought they'd done everything legally, but had been bilked by fraudulent "immigration consultants."

Sure, the American frauds who conned the immigrants get a slap on the wrist -- but the immigrants still get their walking papers, without an opportunity to start the immigration process from scratch.

There's been an uproar about it here too -- God knows, we have one of the most highly-concentrated immigrant populations in the nation -- but last I heard, appeals are ripping right along at the INS's usual brisk pace (i.e., like a tortoise with air brakes).

[Cleita]

3. They used to allow foreign nationals married to US citizens

an out. If they were returned to the country of their origin and the husband came over and took out papers with the embassy for them to emigrate, it usually was a done deal, especially when there were children involved.

What changed?

[Sapphocrat]

8. The change has been gradual...

...over several decades, capped by a great big dose of xenophobia since 9/11.

I'm astounded by how easy it used to be to come to the U.S. Case in point: I have two friends, a lesbian couple in fact -- one is a South African around 60, the other is an Australian pushing 70. Each migrated separately to the U.S. in, I believe, the 1960s; while each was a degreed professional, each was also a single woman with no family ties here, and no job lined up.

Another friend, an Englishwoman in her late 80s, holds dual citizenship by virtue of her marriage to an American; however, she's constantly asking me why foreigncorrespondent can't just up and move to the U.S. and stay, like so many of her acquaintances did 20, 30 years ago. She just can't comprehend how impossible the system has become.

(And never mind the millions of immigrants who schlepped into New York offa da boats -- my family included -- and faced little more than a T.B. check.)

These days, even when you do have the right papers, and a perfectly legitimate reason (e.g., marriage) for immigration, the process can take years -- or never happen at all.

I lurk on a listserv run by an immigration lawyer who fields questions from prospective immigrants and their (straight) American partners, and every story is a heartbreaker. One tiny goof -- sign where you're supposed to initial, or initial where you're supposed to sign -- and an immigrant can expect to settle in for a long, long wait, if approval ever comes.

Of course, there are ways around it. If you're an internationally-recognized rock star, or if you have a couple million $$$ to "invest" in U.S. interests, you're in like Flynn.

[Cleita]

11. Having had a few brushes with the INS because of my

foreign born mother, I found them to be a branch of the government that was anything but American and this was back in the forties before my mother became a citizen. I mean there seemed to be no checks on this agency. I have since known many friends from foreign shores who have been sliced, dice, pureed and then spit out by this organism, yet no Americans care enough to get them investigated like they did a few years ago with the IRS, another agency that once had unchallenged dictatorial powers.

Since our whole government is turning into these two despotic government agencies, I don't know if anything is going to get better soon.

[foreigncorrespondent]

4. They gave her until the end of February???

They made her sign a piece of paper stating she wouldn't appeal the case? Why? Because they know she would WIN an appeal. That is fucking disgusting!

Here Bush* is trying to get illegal Mexican workers, rights and greencards, and yet under his watch this kind of shit happens?

I cannot really fathom the right words right now, I am so damned outraged!

[Sapphocrat]

9. Yeah, 30 days' freedom if she agreed not to appeal...

...or the likelihood of immediate deportation if she appealed.

Which, AFAIC, is state-sanctioned blackmail.

You will sign this paper, or you will never see your family again!

Hey, she should have got our lawyer, eh, fc?

[foreigncorrespondent]

12. Yeah she should have.

Our lawyer is damn good! It is just ashame there was nothing she could do for us, apart from extending my visa, and taking the INS to court when they booted me out of the coutry after misquoting their own laws.

[countmyvote4real]

5. That's disgusting for all the reasons you cite.

And our compassionate, pro-family resident's administration is going to deport her when her immediate family (husband, son and parents) are U.S. citizens? For crying out loud!

Is this the Patriot act in action? I wonder if the proposed marriage training will have a course on "When your spouse is deported?"

I hate what this country has become. If this election doesn't turn it around, I don't think I can stand to stay here.

[Sapphocrat]

10. I can't stand it either...

I mean I really can't stand it. If you haven't already heard my oft-repeated sob story, I'm in pretty much the same boat as the Russian woman's husband, sans baby.

I feel like calling the guy and telling him to give up and start learning Russian, because without a miracle, that family is SOL.