Top News - Former Councilwoman Faces Deportation - AOL News

A lady who thought she was a citizen since she lived in the USA since she was one and was a legal resident but found out not a citizen may be torn from her family and deported...why because she committed a felony which is a deportable offense....she voted in an election! I think post 9/11 immigration officials were given a little to much power and need to get off their trip. All you hear about these days is how they are tearing families apart. Trying to send teens back to countries they don't remember and telling mothers/fathers that they must leave their US citiizen children in foster care or in the care of others because they are being deported and their choice is take them or leave them!

Jen

This is a good example of why it's so hard to come up with some sort of immigration reform, as there are so many complexities. Someone who was a small child when they came over & effectively has no knowledge or recollection of it, and who perhaps was never even told by their parents of their illegal status, should not be shipped back out to a country they have no familiarity with and maybe even not be able to speak the language. I never saw my birth certificate until I was an adult, so I think there could be many people in this situation. I think Lisa Avelar's husband was one - his parents came over when he was a baby but he didn't know he wasn't born here until he applied to become a police office & then was nearly deported. I know they can't look at every case on an individual basis, but they need to do something. We have a similar one here in Detroit where a young man is about to be sent back to Kosovo, where his family came from as refugees when he was a baby. He was raised here, does not speak Croatian, has married an american girl (his high school sweetheart). She will go with him if he is deported, but what he needs is a fast path to citizenship. I mean, we already paid to educate him in our public schools, he is working & paying taxes, he married an american, so why not put him on a path to citizenship? Have him pay a fine or something, but still - he didn't know he wasn't legal.

I agree that immigration reform is very difficult because of the many different situations that people have. This is a hot topic where my uncle lives right now, because there are many people coming from different countries to his area to get medical treatment for free. I had no idea that immigrants could get free medical treatment?! The reason this bothers me a bit is because my uncle just had a heart attack and bypass surgery, and he has very little money. He has no way to pay his bills, and is trying to get some kind of aid from the government. He is a Vietnam veteran and the VA says this is not something they can help him with. I'm sure he will be able to get some kind of disability payments, but apparently there is a lot of paperwork and red tape to go through first. It seems odd that he has to go through so much when people that come here from other countries don't have to deal with this.

While I sympathize with this woman, I also think it is pretty clear where you're born. Like an earlier poster mentioned, once you look at your birth certificate it is hard to not wonder. Now a days a birth certificate is needed for starting school and is one of the forms of identification that every employer requires to prove that you are eligible to work. Somewhere along the line she must have had a clue that she wasn't a citizen.

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"I've been rich and I've been poor but independently wealthy is where it is at."

I agree, it is a very complex situation. I really don't have any answers. In fact, I agree with parts of the arguments on both sides of the issue - sometimes I even find myself agreeing with the Republicans Horrors of horrors for me!

You are comparing new regulations to old regulations. They are not the same.

allgirls

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allgirls, mom to 3 girls

the fact that the government doesn't take care of their own has nothing to do with the immigration debate. that's the propaganda machine working at it's best. My father was illegal and I can tell to that he NEVER got any free medical services, even after he became a citizen.

allgirls

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allgirls, mom to 3 girls

Ok, just telling what has happened where my uncle lives, I'm sure it's not everywhere. And I wasn't blaming immigrants for getting free medical care either, just kind of wondering why my uncle can't seem to get the same deal as his neighbor who is not a citizen. I agree with you that it's a problem with the government not taking care of their own.

I have lived (legally) in two other countries. My husband did an internship in England for a year. I was the accompanying spouse. Had we had a child in the UK, the child would not have been a citizen of the UK since we were only there with my husband having a one year work permit. For a child born to foreigners in the UK to have British citizenship, we would have had to have had permanent residency. Permanent residency is what used to be referred to in this country as a "green card."

However, in the UK, since we had a legal permit to be there for over six months (the usual amount of time a US citizen can stay in the UK without a visa), we were eligible for socialized medical care. I had numerous sinus infections and a miscarriage during that year. The only thing we were charged was the five pound co-pay for medication. However, had we not had the visa to be there for over six months, we would not have had this benefit. This was UK law with regards to visas. My husband was employed there and the medical system is socialized.

We also lived in South Africa for 8 1/2 years while my husband taught college. We had to prove medical insurance to get our visas. I was again the accompanying spouse with regards to status and was not allowed to work for money. Again, any child born to us with just the one-year visa status would have not been eligible for US citizenship. If we ran up medical bills we couldn't pay, it was made clear to us that we would be deported. We were there legally and they could trace where we lived.

South Africa has a socialized medical system and a private medical system. If we used the socialized system, we would have had to pay the private rates. (But the care is not as good in the socialized system, so if you have to pay, you may as well get the private system's level of care.)

I don't have any answers, but I do know how I lived in two other countries and abided by their laws with regards to visas, residency, medical care, etc. In one country I was eligible for medical care, in the other I had to prove that we had medical insurance AND sufficient income to be allowed to stay in the country.

At no point did I think I had "rights" in either country that went beyond what their laws offered. Had a subsequent visa been denied, we would have left the country before our visas expired. I had a child in South Africa who is a US citizen with no hope of ever getting dual citizenship. Had we not registered our daughter at the US embassy, she would be without a country of citizenship.

Our laws allow that anyone born in this country is a US citizen and is therefore allowed to stay. In South Africa, even public school has fees/tuition. In the UK, I am not sure if we would have had to pay for school if we had had a child since we had no children at that time.

I will say that my experience has led me to believe that the illegals in this country have no respect for the rule of law. I do understand the desperation. I lived in South Africa, which gets a couple of million illegals a year from other African countries because South Africa is the US of Africa. I also grew up in central coastal California and have been in both Juarez, Mexico (across the bridge from El Paso, TX) where I have seen people living in cardboard boxes in the SNOW! I have also been over the border from the California border of Mexico.

One of the main problems is the economic situtation in Mexico. If Mexico would ever stabilize, it would help end the endless stream of illegals across the border seeking a better life.

If illegals were not eligible for so many things free of charge here it would make being an illegal a much more difficult life. I would have been deported for unpaid medical bills in South Africa. My husband and I had to put the amount of money it would cost for one-way return tickets to the US into the bank with a freeze on it that only the South African government could unfreeze in case we had to be deported. We were allowed to earn the interest off of that money, but we were in the position that we had to pre-pay the South African government the amount it would cost them to deport us just in case they needed to deport us! How's that for rights?

I do not have answers, but I do believe that the US system needs drastic reform. Citizens of this country should not have less access to "free" medical care than illegals. The main reason I believe illegals get free care is that hospitals write off bad debt. Illegals cannot be collected from in the same way that a citizen can have house, car, property attached to pay bills. However, they are not deported the way I would have been deported from South Africa either.

Like many things lately, immigration officials are "darned if they do, darned if they don't." What a terribly difficult job they have - I certainly wouldn't want to do what they do. That doesn't mean that I condone all of their actions. I am just saying it is easy to pick apart an organization using a couple of examples.

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If you need to get in touch with me, my email is teach1107910@yahoo.com.