How Is Everybody Doing?

Sorry for the long hiatus and thanks to everyone who emailed.  My health has been very poor and I may be looking at surgery in the future because of stomach problems.  The energy to blog just wasn't there.

The fingerprinting ended up not going very well.  For a facility where that is their only function, not only are they arrogant and arbitrary, they're incompetent.  We were notified that one of the girls had to come back because the fingerprints were not of sufficient quality for the FBI database.

Unbelievable?  Not really.

1994?  Are you kidding me?  This girl has been living here as an American, with an American family, as their daughter, for 14 years and the government is so worried about her now that she may be deported?

The Mulvihills also say U.S. embassy officials in Guatemala interviewed the woman claiming to be her biological mother at the time of the adoption and did not raise any concerns. The embassy officials, however, did not conduct a blood test of the woman that would have definitely proven that the woman had given birth to Allie.

The Guatemalan government also never challenged the adoption, the Mulvihills said.

But U.S. immigration officials still aren't satisfied, and the dispute over her adoption has become a roadblock on Allie's path to citizenship. Neither Allie nor her parents have a way to track down her biological mother and the adoption agency used by the Mulvihills used to adopt their daughter has gone under.

So, over 14 years later, the government can arbitrarily decide that what it did back then wasn't good enough.  Puts the phrase "Good enough for government work" in a new light, doesn't it?  I may need to re-think my stance on illegal immigration and amnesty because it doesn't seem we are isolated cases.  During our own efforts, I have not seen anyone I thought was trying to do something shady to stay here.  Just dozens and dozens of people trying to work through a broken system, some of them terrified of making the slightest error (as we were for the first appointment to get fingerprints).

"We're told to go in one direction and when we do, we're told to switch gears and go into another direction. And when we look for council from the government to give us a definite answer, we get stuck with people who are supposed to be working on marriage contracts rather than immigration contracts," he said.

And now that she is getting older, the consequences of Allie's immigration status are getting tougher. Her lack of citizenship means she cannot get her driver's license, vote, apply for a job or qualify for financial aid.

I know the feeling.  Our income tax situation will be screwed up for years to come because of this and may never get resolved for the past three years. 

Nobody can really understand the desperation the Mulvihills family feels, but I'm sure we come close.  If you have children, you can come close too.  Pretend you just got a letter from the government.  There is no contact information on the letter, no instructions.  The only thing the letter says is that you must send $3000.00 immediately or your children might be picked up and taken from you forever.  All your efforts to find out more are futile, so you send the money. 

Then, another letter comes.  This one says that everyone in your family must go to the next town over, stand on the corner of a certain intersection for exactly 190 minutes starting at 3:15am, and on your way home, you must drop off a money-order (no cash or checks please) for $171.38 at the Probate Court for "costs".  Or your children will be taken from you forever. 

.............

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That's how those of us navigating the immigration process feel.  Never knowing how much money the next step will cost, just that it's going to cost.  Never knowing why some of these things are "required" when they don't make sense.  Never knowing when someone will decide that what was good enough before is no longer acceptable.  Just knowing that you love your kids and you might lose them.


Is that what America is supposed to be about?  Have I been wrong all this time?

Posted by: Stashiu3 at 16:41:46 | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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