Rod Graham is going back to the Bahamas again on Monday.For the fourth time.
To court, he hopes, to free his
wife and maybe, just maybe, to set the wheels in motion that will finally bring her home.
But he knows, no matter what he
hopes, that in a country fighting massive illegal immigration, major problems could be
ahead.
To begin with, his wife, Anay,
faces an immediate criminal charge in Nassau because she presented a
“counterfeit” document instead of a passport when she was leaving the country.
Even if she didn’t know it was counterfeit, that’s considered a crime.
And using a
“counterfeit” green card — the “permanent resident alien” card
that allows an immigrant to work in the United States — means she was working here
illegally, and the penalties for that are heavy. She could be deported or — now that
she’s out of the country already — not be allowed back in. And she could be
barred from returning for 10 years.
What’s more, she’s
pregnant.
And Rod and his family no longer
know where to turn.
The first time Rod went to Nassau
was when he and Anay went on their honeymoon last May. It was a glorious week but it ended
in a nightmare that seems to have no end.
As they were about to board their
plane to come home, Anay, who had sought asylum in America from civil war and a direct
threat of death in her native Guatemala and had lived and worked here for nearly eight
years, was arrested and put in jail, charged with using an illegal document.
A scanning machine showed that her
green card was a fake.
She was using the card instead of
a passport, as she was told to do by the travel agent and a routine procedure. The card
not only allows an immigrant to work but also becomes her travel document. Nor did she
fear using it because she thought it was legal. She and Rod were stunned when the card
went through the scanner, and Anay was arrested. Since then they’ve learned that the
Social Security card — and number — she was issued with the green card is also a
fraud.
Horrified at the prospect of
leaving her in Nassau, Rod called his parents, arranged to get money, paid $5,000 in bail
to get her out of jail, temporarily settled her with an acquaintance — and came home
without her. He was devastated.
He went back in August with his
parents, Don and Sandy Graham, and his sister, Ashley Honeycutt, to meet with Ed
Romatowski, the consul general at the American Embassy.
They were armed with a notebook
full of official papers — a petition for citizenship, biographical forms, where Anay
was born, her parents’ names, when she came to the United States, where she worked,
the license she had to run a pharmacy in Guatemala, his bail receipt, letters from U.S.
Sens. Jesse Helms and John Edwards and Congressman Mel Watt, even a page torn from a phone
book with her name and number on it. Doesn’t that prove she thought she was here
legally, they ask, that she wasn’t trying to hide?
They hoped that would straighten
the whole mess out, and they could bring Anay home.
But that didn’t happen. What
did happen was that they learned she’d have to have an FBI check and a routine police
check, and it was heartening that Romatowski believed her. But they still had to leave in
a flood of tears — without Anay.
“I started crying,” Rod
says. “Anay was crying. My mom was crying. I’ve never seen my mother cry like
that. Everybody was crying — the five of us, me and my mom and dad and Ashley and
Anay.”
In September he went a third time.
Anay’s court date had been set for Sept. 29, so he got two weeks off at Freightliner
— with his boss’ blessing but no pay.
And no results.
“The Bahamians had forgotten
to notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service about the court date.”
Hope evaporated again.
He couldn’t believe it. He
went everywhere trying to find out what to do, but got nowhere.
“I talked to the American
Embassy and a supervisor for the immigration service for the Bahamas who said the court
system there is lackadaisical. They said the courts have no concern for anything, and
that’s the way everything’s been. Nobody cares.”
But worst of all is the worry.
Going to work every day, he worries about Anay and their baby and what kind of care
she’s getting and what effect fibroid tumors that cause pain might have on the baby.
Almost in her seventh month now, she’s spending her days alone in a motel room,
forcing herself to go out for a walk for the baby’s sake, waiting day after day for
Rod’s call about 1 p.m., before he leaves for work on the second shift, and about 1
a.m., after he gets home again.
“She can’t even get a
little job and work because she’s not a citizen there either,” says Rod’s
sister, Ashley, in frustration.
Former owner of the Farmhouse
Restaurant with her husband, Mark, Ashley is busy with her children 6, 5 and 3 years old,
but she takes time to spearhead the effort to find out what they can do and where they can
get help.
And she’s come to the
conclusion that Anay’s story, told once already, must be updated and told over and
over again because someone somewhere might know what to do.
The problems didn’t start in
Nassau. They started with a civil war in Guatemala where Anay operated a small pharmacy.
The military had harassed her, accusing her of helping rebel soldiers. Once she was pulled
out of her house by her hair, a soldier holding a pistol to her head, threatening to kill
her.
She got away, came to the United
States, applied for asylum and quickly discovered she needed a green card if she wanted to
work. How could she get one? Other immigrants told her where to go and what to do. She
went. It cost $300.
But she never questioned whether
she was doing what she was supposed to do.
She couldn’t speak the
language, thought everything American was right, certainly legal, and it never occurred to
her that she shouldn’t have to pay for a green card.
Then she left California for
Wilmington where she had an uncle — and made another mistake. It never occurred to
her that she needed to leave a forwarding address with the immigration service.
With her card, she got a job,
received W-2 forms regularly, paid tax and Social Security, got a driver’s license,
bought a car, studied to be a nurse and bumped — literally, bumped — into Rod
Graham in a book store in February, 1998. A little more than a year later they were
married and went to Nassau on their honeymoon— and both those mistakes she
didn’t know she’d made suddenly rose up to haunt her. The green card was a fake.
Not leaving a forwarding address so the immigration service could contact her meant she
got “out of status” and was here illegally and that she got into Nassau
illegally.
And she’s still there.
Her husband and his parents are
preparing to leave tomorrow to be with her in court.
Her new family has hired a
Bahamian lawyer who initially asked for $10,000 to represent her in court on Tuesday.
“He’s doing it now for
$5,000,” Rod says, whose costs so far have run to about $30,000.
The lawyer, he says, “is not
overly concerned. He thinks they’re not going to be able to find her guilty because
she’s not guilty. They’re charging her with knowingly possessing a fraudulent
document, but she didn’t know it. They have to prove she did.”
But he’s still worried. If
she loses, she could be deported to Guatemala and not allowed to emigrate to the United
States. Or she could just be fined. Nobody seems to know what the penalty is.
“We’ve never been given
any solid information,” Rod says. “Everything is just in limbo.”
Jacqueline Lilly, district liaison
staff member in Congressman Mel Watt’s Salisbury office, says the congressman’s
staff has contacted the immigration service and the Department of State for the Grahams,
but the offense in Nassau has to be settled before anything else can be done. She
doesn’t know how it will be settled or how long it will take.
“There’s no mandatory
sentence,” she says. “It’s all based on the judge’s
determination.”
But once that’s settled, she
says, Anay faces another dilemma with the U.S. government. Being married to an American
citizen gives her no special status because they didn’t know they had to file a
petition for an alien relative to be allowed in the country. And because she was living
and working here illegally.
Now that he does know — the
result of Ashley’s detective work — Rod has filed a petition for a waiver of the
petition. That decision will be made in the U.S. immigration office in Monterrey, Mexico.
And Ed Romatowski, that consul
general in Nassau, “doesn’t feel like it’s a matter of if they’ll
approve it. It’s a matter of when,” Rod says.
But when will when be?
Ashley called the immigration
office in Monterrey about a month ago and was told it will be six months before
Anay’s case is looked at.
Six months?
“We’re thinking it will
be approved when it is looked at,” Ashley says. “I don’t see any reason why
it won’t be. She hasn’t ever done anything wrong. She’s a good person. I
just assume that when they finally get to it, it will be approved.”
But what happens in the meantime?
Six months is going to be too
late, Ashley says, for her to be with her husband when she has their baby. And if
she’s freed in Nassau but not allowed back in the United States?
A nightmare, just a nightmare.
“I feel like I’ve
exhausted every avenue,” Ashley says. “I’ve called every immigration office
from here to California, every Senator, every Congressman, the head of the Department of
Labor, the chief counsel general for American embassies, the investigations division of
immigration services in Miami.”
“My phone bill is, oh, my
phone bill! And I don’t know where to go from here. Somebody’s got to be able to
do something.
“I feel like I’ve
exhausted ever option other than try to draw attention to the case, so somebody will say
this is wrong. We’ve got to do something about it. I want it to get attention so
somebody can call and say, ‘I have a solution.’ They’ve got to let her come
back home until this process is finished.”
Some people have suggested they
smuggle her back into this country. That happens every day.
But Rod and his family say no.
He doesn’t want his wife to
do anything illegal and live in fear that she might get reported. He doesn’t want to
be scared.
She didn’t know she was
illegal and they don’t want her to become illegal.
“We really want to do things
the right way,” Ashley adds, “to make sure we have done everything by the book
and done it legally, but ... ”
But right now it’s hard.
She sighs.
“Everywhere I go people ask
me, ‘Is she home yet?’ A lot of people are praying and are concerned. Maybe
there’s somebody out there who can do something.” |
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