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Citizenship not assured for unions involving illegal immigrants

By: Perla Trevizo
(Contact)

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Randall Emery

PDF: Pew Hispanic Center

For Shawna and Ismael Avila, saying “I do” means they may have to leave the country.

The couple met three years ago and it didn’t take long for Mrs. Avila, 24, to fall in love and want to marry, despite the fact that Mr. Avila had been in the country illegally for 13 years.

“It didn’t bother me that he was undocumented,” said Mrs. Avila, an American citizen who moved here from Michigan in 2003. Like many, Mrs. Avila believed that once she married, the process of getting her husband’s status legalized would be simpler than it is.

She was wrong.

“I knew it was going to be more complicated because of his situation, but I had no idea I needed a lawyer,” she said. “I thought I could just fill out the applications and turn them in myself.”

In 2005, there were approximately 6.6 million families in the United States in which either the head of the family or the spouse was unauthorized, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Just getting married to a U.S. citizen does not grease the rails to permanent residency, even for someone entering the country legally. And the task gets far more complicated, sometimes impossible, for illegal immigrants.

According to current law, even if a relative or a spouse asks for someone to be granted permanent residency, it can be a three- to 10-year bar, depending on how long they have lived in the United States illegally.

Along with massive amounts of paperwork, there are interviews with immigration officials, background checks, court papers to file, medical exams, fingerprinting, photographing — many little parts that add up to the whole.

The cost can be prohibitive. Filing fees, medical exams, photos and other expenses can cost about $2,000, immigration lawyers say. Attorney fees can add from $1,500 to $6,000 on top of that.

“Nobody wants to believe that this process is this hard and expensive,” said Terry Olsen, a local immigration lawyer whose wife, Miao-Ju, is from Taiwan and had to go through the process.

“A lot of times people have to change their entire lives around immigration,” he said. “We had to get married here instead of in Taiwan, where her family is, because I knew it would be less complicated.”

The process is easier if someone has simply overstayed the term of a visa since those cases can be handled while the person remains in the United States, Mr. Olsen said.

For the Avilas, who’ve been married for seven months, unless the U.S. government approves a hardship waiver, the best option is to return to his home country of Mexico for at least 10 years. A hardship waiver can be approved if the U.S. citizen can prove he or she will suffer if they must live in their spouse’s country of origin, Mr. Olsen said.

“We can’t take that risk,” said Mrs. Avila, who’s currently getting her master’s degree in professional counseling. “If it’s denied, it’s automatic deportation and we would have to leave for 10 years; he has a son here.”

Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for Numbers USA, a nonprofit immigration reduction organization, said the law should apply evenly to everyone, even if it involves U.S. citizens.

“People shouldn’t expect to come illegally and then if they (get) married, expect for us to just ignore the fact that they came illegally and grant them permanent residency,” she said. “If you know that the person you are marrying is an illegal alien, you are making the choice to deal with that issue. The bottom line is that person broke the law.”

When it comes to obtaining legal status, the law should not separate spouses or parents and children, said Randall Emery, who in 2006 co-founded American Families United, an organization that works to ensure that American immigration law protects families.

“We don’t want any special passes ... we just want for the government to respect the U.S. citizen’s rights,” he said.

“Our estimates show there are about 2 million families — husbands, wives, kids — separated, who are going through the legal process,” he added.

Mr. Emery also went through the process with his wife Paola, a Columbian native who was in the United States on a tourist visa in 2000. The procedure of adjusting his wife’s status was running smoothly until they got to the interview at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office and were told they couldn’t approve her because she lacked a background check.

What seemed to be a relatively easy case took four years, Mr. Emery said.

Mr. Emery, who has a three-month-old baby, said they would have had children earlier if it wasn’t for that.

“A lot of people put off having children because you don’t know how it’s going to work out,” he said.

Being patient is the hardest part, Mrs. Avila said.

“We had thought of buying a home or having children, but we can’t do it until we settle this. It’s too dangerous,” she said.

Mr. Avila’s parents left Mexico City to work in the United States so their children would have a better life. When Mr. Avila was 17 he decided to follow them. He now has a three-year-old son from a previous relationship.

Mrs. Avila said she’s afraid every time her husband leaves the house.

“I don’t know if they (immigration officials) are going to take him away one of these days,” she said. “Just in case anything happens, I want to have everything ready. I’m trying to pay off my debts and my car and looking for universities in Mexico where I can continue my studies.”

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