MAHWAH, N.J. — A northern New Jersey widow’s fight to get her green card after the death of her husband could have a big impact on similar cases around the nation.
Mahwah resident Osserritta Robinson is an immigrant from Jamaica whose husband, a U.S. citizen, died in the 2003 Staten Island Ferry crash.
Immigration officials denied her green card application because the couple had been married eight months instead of the required two years.
An appeals court upheld the decision, but Robinson’s attorney tells The Record of Bergen County that he’s petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court.
An advocacy group, Surviving Spouses Against Deportation, says 170 widows and widowers face deportation because their citizen spouses died before two years of marriage.
A Eugene man and his Canadian bride are still paying a painful price for their 2007 decision to tell border agents they were “just engaged” rather than “just married.”
University of Oregon student Nathaniel Spinney and his wife, Sarah Rutherford, are still living apart — 16 months after tying the knot on a farm in her native Nova Scotia.
The consequences of their impulsive but admittedly foolhardy decision to lie about their newlywed status have also prevented Rutherford, 26, from completing her master’s degree program at Fuller Theological Seminary in California.
“It seems unintelligible now that we would think we could do something like that and get away with it,” said Spinney, a 25-year-old Eugene native and UO math major.
They could face another 3½ years of separation. Rutherford received a five-year “exclusion” from the United States as her penalty for providing false information to U.S. border agents. (more…)
ST. LOUIS, Mich. – Nothing can keep apart two people in love.
Not even government red tape, more than 6,500 miles and not being able to have a spoken conversation.
David Eldridge, 61, is ready to get married. But his bride-to-be, 51-year-old LiYing Fan, still is in Beijing, teaching martial arts and waiting to complete the process of acquiring a visa to move to the United States.
Eldridge — a resident of St. Louis, Mich., and a Gratiot County commissioner — says he met his beloved on an Internet dating site in November 2007.
The two have communicated through an online text translator, but there was one problem when they began speaking on the phone: He speaks no Chinese, and she speaks no English.
Doesn’t matter, Eldridge says.
“Voice can be a relationship killer but hers was sweet and pleasant,” he told the Morning Sun of Mount Pleasant for a story published Monday.
The couple finally met when Fan visited the United States last year as part of a cultural exchange. Her sister, who lives in Milwaukee, traveled to Pasadena, Calif., to meet her. Eldridge went, too.
When they met, Eldridge said, “everything I felt and thought was put into concrete. … It’s funny how you can communicate when you don’t speak the same language.”
Eldridge then began putting together the paperwork for a fiancee visa and learned on New Year’s Day that it was approved. Fan now must undergo a physical exam and interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing before she can come to the United States, possibly in April or May.
Eldridge has two daughters from a previous marriage and 10 grandchildren. Fan’s son died at a young age. Both have been married twice before.
They plan a small ceremony in Michigan, he says, partly to avoid the additional red tape that would come with a wedding in China.
Immigrants, whether they are in the United States legally or illegally, cannot rest easily in Tennessee.
For that matter, people who are natives of the U.S. and whose skin happens to be brown also have reason to be nervous.
That is because the trend of resentment over the steadily growing immigrant population here has gone beyond the intolerance of individuals and threatens to become ingrained in our state and local legal codes.
Government-sponsored racism is an ugly thing.
The signs of this alarming trend, of course, include the well-publicized effort to limit all Metro Nashville communications and publications to English. But other instances have emerged, as well. As reported in The Tennessean earlier this month, a legal permanent U.S. resident who lives in Franklin saw his state ID and green card confiscated at a driver’s license office on unfounded suspicion that the documents were fake. The state Safety Department’s explanation that it is agency policy to investigate “suspicious” documents was sorely lacking.
In Davidson County, a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico and her immigrant fiance were denied a marriage license simply because the fiance could not produce a Social Security card. Even though state policy was for county clerks to accept a valid passport or visa in the absence of a Social Security card, and the fiance had a valid passport, the couple was denied.
The Franklin man eventually got back his documents, but in the interim had to fear leaving his house without documents and was unable to visit family in Mexico. The couple had to sue the state of Tennessee, and eventually the state attorney general agreed that the marriage-license policy was unfair.
EDMONTON – For Christine Tyrrell, Tuesday was supposed to be the beginning of her “new life.”
The 30-year-old was to fly from Edmonton to Houston, where she was to marry her Texan fiance on Sept. 20. As Tyrrell excitedly approached the customs gate at Edmonton International Airport, her only worry was her satin wedding dress might be too big for a carry-on.
The customs officer had no problem with Tyrrell’s dress but he wouldn’t let her board her plane. Nearly six hours later, Tyrrell found herself driving home to Beaumont instead of flying towards the altar.
“I was supposed to have a fiance visa,” she said. “Because I didn’t have the paperwork or what not, it was recommended that they withdraw my application to enter the States.”
Tyrrell’s fiance Joe Marks had already consulted with U.S. immigration officials however, and they advised him not to get a fiance visa. He said he was given two options: either get a fiance visa or marry in the U.S. and then deal with the paperwork later.
At least two officials recommended the latter option, Marks said.
“They said that would be the easiest way to do it because we’d be circumventing the fiance visa,” Marks said. “They said it would be no problem. Obviously, we were under the impression that we were doing the right thing.” (more…)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) moved the agency Lockbox to a new location in Chicago on May 28. While the Post Office Box address is the same, the move changes the address for deliveries by private couriers (non-USPS).
The new address for deliveries by private courier is:
USCIS:
Attn: Please check Form Instructions for the proper Attn: information
131 South Dearborn, 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60603-5517
Express courier services have agreed to forward packages to the new site for 90 days (until Aug. 24, 2008). During this transition period, USCIS will accept and process without delay all cases otherwise properly filed.
Forms processed at the USCIS Chicago Lockbox include those associated with family-based adjustment of status, all Petitions for Alien Relative (Form I-130), and Temporary Protective Status.
Filing instructions for these forms are available in the Immigration Forms section, located at the top of this page.
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will soon be revising the filing instructions for the Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence (Form I-751) to require filing at the California or Vermont Service Centers, where all Forms I-751 are currently adjudicated. The adjudication functions for these petitions have already been assigned to these locations in anticipation of this change. Therefore, all petitioners filing a Form I-751 are requested to file the petition with the California or Vermont Service Centers, depending on the state in which they reside.
Form I-751 is used by individuals who were granted conditional residential status through marriage to a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident and who desire to petition USCIS to remove the conditions on their residence.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Jacqueline Coats’ husband drowned after he dove into a fierce Pacific Ocean riptide to rescue two boys. Now the immigrant from Kenya might be forced to leave the United States because he died before filing her residency application. She is among more than 80 foreign-born widows across the nation who face possible deportation because their husbands died before immigration paperwork was approved.
Some attorneys want to challenge the government’s policy of rejecting green card requests if an immigrant’s American spouse dies before the application is processed. At least one lawyer plans to file a class-action lawsuit.
“This is a wrong that definitely has to be righted,” said immigration attorney Ralph Pineda of Orlando, Fla.
A group of California congressional lawmakers filed a bill in January asking the Congress to grant Coats legal status, but similar measures for other immigrants have seldom passed.
“It is an outrage and an injustice to the memory of this courageous hero that his wife should suffer the loss of family and livelihood once again,” said Democratic Assembly member Mary Hayashi.
The government has also generally denied applications for permanent residence — so-called “green cards” — for surviving spouses of U.S. citizens if the death occurs during the first two years of marriage.
BRADENTON –It was about 3:50 a.m. Tuesday when Keith Campbell got the call he had been waiting on.
On the other end was his wife of nine years. Akiko had received word from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo she would be allowed to reenter the United States.
After six months in limbo, she and her two sons would be coming home to Bradenton.
“Finally, I can come home!” Akiko wrote in an e-mail. “I called Keith immediately. We cried and shared the joy over the telephone.”
The family spoke to each other and celebrated via webcam early Tuesday – Keith from the family home in Bradenton and Akiko with sons Leo and Micah from her native Japan.
“We did it,” Keith said later. “What can I say, it’s wonderful.”
Elsewhere in America, strident voices propel the immigration debate. Protesters march behind U.S. and Mexican flags, chanting pro-immigrant slogans in Spanish and demanding amnesty for people who crossed the border illegally.
A quieter but equally desperate quest unfolds in Northeast Ohio, where advocates of immigration reform are more likely to be people like Marcela Gallardo.
She was 52 in 1995, a newly sworn-in American citizen, when she applied to have her children join her from the Philippines. Twelve years later, she’s still waiting for visas for them.
“It’s very hard,” said Gallardo, who promotes her cause by filling out forms, paying filing fees and praying. “I want to be with my kids, too. I’m getting old now, and I need them here.”
As a naturalized U.S. citizen, Gallardo is entitled to bring over her children. Some day. Her family must wait in line for visas that are especially scarce for the Philippines, India and China – nations that happen to be primary suppliers of immigrants to Greater Cleveland and Ohio.
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