Keith Thomas' Story




Letter from Keith Thomas
November, 2006

(Pictured left to right: Keith, Sandy, Anna & Simeon)

It is with great sadness that I write this e-mail to many of you eliciting your prayers for my family and me again. I have been denied the Residency Visa that I have been waiting for nearly two years to receive. I had to sign for the official letter last week.

On top of getting that letter, my immigration lawyer also told me that I am expected to voluntarily be making plans to leave the country (although they have not given me a time limit so far). I feel that this is very unjust and flies in the face of any rehabilitation beliefs of most people--after all, the reason I have been denied stems from two marijuana convictions from 1971 and 1975 when I was 17 and 21 respectively. I am now 52 years of age and have lived an exemplary life as a Christian Pastor in this church for the last six years.

Many of you do not know the whole Keith Thomas saga. In 1971, when I was 17 years of age and quite rebellious, I was convicted of being knowingly concerned in the importation of Cannabis (a stronger form of Marijuana) into England from Morocco on a cruise liner I was working on. Of course, this was before I became a Christian. Then again in 1975, at age 21, I was convicted of a second drug offense. This time it was “allowing my premises to be used for the smoking of Cannabis.” Basically I had friends around my home that smoked marijuana. For this second offense I was sent to prison for six months.

I found Christ some three years later after a search for meaning to my life after visiting many different countries. Three years after my conversion in 1977, I met the most beautiful, delightful, committed Christian I had ever come upon, Sandy, an American from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I wasn’t stupid, I asked her to marry me. After our wedding in 1980, we attempted to get a residency visa for me to live and work in the United States. Upon filling out the residency papers I was asked if I had ever been convicted of any drug offense. I was honest, due to being a Christian, and told the US Immigration of my two convictions in England when I was younger. I was denied a residency visa on the basis of the two convictions. One conviction could be waived due to being married to an American citizen but not two, even though the first one was committed when I was only 17. I was told then that I would never be allowed to live in the USA.

It felt like a curse over my head. My convictions had nothing to do with the US, but I found that if Sandy and I wanted to stay together we would have to live outside of her home country. I always felt in those early days that if I would be obedient to hear the call to minister the Gospel to everywhere God would send me, he would make a way for us to come and live in Sandy’s country, the United States. Since then I have struggled at the hands of immigration officers who still perhaps see me as a drug convict. In 1990, I was turned back at Chicago airport and sent home, leaving my pregnant wife carrying Simeon, and trying to explain to my 5-year-old daughter that I could not be there at the birth of her brother. Later on they allowed me to visit, but it was always after intense interrogation.

The years seemed to slip by, we have two beautiful children that are proud to be US citizens and carry American passports. By 1999 Sandy and I were both burned out as a couple and needing a change. Sandy was seeing her parents aging too fast as she looked at photos. She desperately wanted time with them. We had very little money for her to even visit. That year we found out that the law had changed and that it was possible to get a work visa if I was to apply on the basis of being a pastor in a Church of the same denomination. It meant that I had to get a job in a Vineyard Church as I was ordained by the Vineyard in 1990. Steve Sjogren, then the Senior Pastor of the Cincinnati Vineyard, happened to come to the area in England where I had been laboring for some time and invited me to the Outward Focused Church Conference in Cincinnati.

By faith I took a step risking the little resources that I had accumulated to buy my first computer. I spent my savings on an airplane ticket to come to the conference. My thinking was that I possibly would meet Vineyard Pastors at the conference and maybe I would get an opportunity to work with them and my family’s dream of time in their home country would be realized. When I came, I found the most amazing church with the same values that I had cherished in the church plants we had undertaken. I happened to look at the church newspaper and saw a job going as a Small Groups Pastor. I got the job.

Still, it took me 9 months to get my visa from the time I got the job at VCC. Talk about being in labor for 9 months! We had been rejected twice during those 9 months and in desperation one day I got on my knees and cried out to God. I was in tears and at a loss due to all the hope and pain that we had gone through. "God," I said, "you have to do something for my family and me, we can’t keep going on like this." I had come to an end of myself trying to find a way to bring my family home. While I was literally in tears, crying out to God and talking like this, the phone rang. It was the US Immigration! They were calling me to tell me to come up and pick up my work visa to work at VCC in the USA. I cried again! Words cannot convey the happiness in my heart as I caught Sandy, (we have now been married for 25 years) on her way home from work that day. She could not believe me at first but when I looked into her eyes and told her she was going home, we both cried and hugged and thanked God. The God I serve hears prayer!

Now we are up against it again. I can choose to leave the country voluntarily or the immigration officials are well within the law to come and put me in a cell and schedule me for a hearing before an Immigration Judge, who will hear me out before making judgment on my case. If I go voluntarily, there will be no black mark on my passport; if I stay and wait for them to haul me before an Immigration Judge it may hinder my chances of ever getting in again.

My son and daughter have already told me that they want to stay, after all, this is their country, their friends and relatives are here. It was upsetting for my son to leave England and his friends but now that he and his sister have been here six years they cannot conceive of leaving. The difference just in Simeon’s Geography and History classes would set his schooling back quite considerably. I can’t do that to him. I have to fight this out.

I know and have experienced that prayer changes things. Would you pray for my family that there may be a way for us to stay together in this country, the USA? The situation seems unjust to me. In Britain, after 7 years, all records of my past convictions are completely expunged (wiped out for all legal purposes). I don’t have to say anything about my past. The trouble is that the US government does not recognize that particular British law so my past reverberates into my future as well as my present. If the US Immigration will not realize that a person can be rehabilitated after 35 years, at what point in my life will it ever happen! Please pray that I can continue to serve in this great nation teaching the scriptures and building people up in Christ.

Please feel free to pass this on to people who will pray for us.

Keith Thomas, Community Pastor
Vineyard Community Church, Cincinnati




Prayer focuses:

Pray that God would show Keith and VCC favor by giving through any means He chooses the governmental allowance for him to stay with his family in our country and continue to serve.

Pray that God would be glorified in this situation and that neither Keith nor his family, nor our church nor the US government/British government would be defamed in any way.

If you'd like to share a word of encouragement with Keith via e-mail, send it to info@vineyardcincinnati.com.

If you'd like to write Congressman John Boehner, here is a link to a website form.

I recieved this article recently and felt compelled to help this family. If anyone has any suggestions?

i will def def remember you in my prayers and would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best of luck, do pray for us too when you out there.. God bless you and for sharing your stroy,it has really touched my heart.

I tried to send an email but it would not accept it, however I will keep Keith and his family in my prayers

any update on this?

www.vineyardcincinnati.com/vcc.php?id=983

very touching ,so why does it say aos approved ? and offences are NOT expunged after 7 years in the UK ,they stay for life .