An entire illegal Filipino family that lived in the US for 19 yrs was deported a few years ago
Why are other illegal families allowed to stay in the US ?
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Tuesday, January 13, 2004 (SF Chronicle)
Adult kids face deportation to land they don't know/After 19 years in U.S.,
Filipino parents nearly out of legal options
Cicero A. Estrella, Chronicle Staff Writer
The Cuevases thought they were doing what was best for their family when they decided to stay in the United States after their visitors' visas had expired. In 1996, they applied for permanent residence status.
Now, after living in America for 19 years, the Cuevas family is facing deportation on Feb. 17 to the Philippines -- a country they barely remember, and one whose culture their adult children know little about.
The Cuevases are among hundreds of families in the Bay Area and thousands in the country who have tried to legalize their status -- only to find themselves in a legal quagmire that leads to deportation, says Joren Lyons, an immigration rights attorney for the Asian Law Caucus.
According to Carl Shusterman, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who has been consulting with the family, it was a matter of bad timing.
Until 1996, the Cuevases could have applied for permanent residence based on good moral character and seven continuous years of residence in the United States. They could have said that deportation would have caused them extreme hardship.
But on Sept. 30, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which changed the standards to 10 years of continuous residence and "exceptional" hardship that affected not the undocumented immigrants but relatives who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
The Cuevases applied for asylum two weeks after that law was passed. When their application for asylum was denied in 2000, the Cuevas family was placed on order to depart voluntarily under the new law. In 2002, they were turned down by the Board of Immigration Appeals. The case went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last year and was again rejected.
"We wanted to come out in the open," the father said. "We wanted to be legal. We thought it was the right thing to do." He said he and his wife, who asked that their first names not be used because their case is still pending, discussed the issue for years before hiring a lawyer. The father said he moved the family to the United States after he lost his job when the Philippine economy turned sour after Benigno Aquino, opposition leader to then-President Ferdinand Marcos, was assassinated in 1983. He said he filed for asylum because he was afraid of persecution if
he returned to the Philippines. The family, he said, would be in worse shape if they were to return to the Philippines now.
"We did all this for (the kids)," he said. "It was the only reason why we came over."
The Cuevases' children didn't know they were in the country illegally until they received a letter on Dec. 13 informing them they had 70 days to voluntarily depart...........
MORE:
http://forums.yellowworld.org/archive/index.php?t-12935.html
http://www.youthoutlook.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=186a45f44e63859f1c963b840ab927a5
