Sunday, April 06, 2008
News

Green card jungle

Atlanta refugees mislabeled terrorist-supporters get a second chance 

Thai Veng with son Kou, age 2, two of thousands of Hmong refugees who fled Laos for Thailand 30 years ago, resettled in California in2004.
CREDIT: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
By Stephanie Ramage

When the woman left Ethiopia and came to Atlanta, she was fleeing militants who had forced her to provide sexual services and manual labor for years. U.S. State Department officials recognized the courage she had shown in getting away from the group and assured her that the United States would consider her a refugee in need of help. She would be safe in America.

But once in the states, her application for a “green card”—the card that denotes permanent resident status—was denied because, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), she had “provided material support” to a terrorist organization.
“The reason that she had gotten asylum was that she had left the group, she wanted nothing to do with them and she was in danger,” says Sue Colussy, an immigration attorney who has worked on the woman’s case for Catholic Charities. “But in the interim, since she was interviewed over there, the law changed, and USCIS said she provided material support.”

The support, says Colussy, was apparently forced sex and laundry.
Ellen Beattie, regional director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Decatur, tells a similar story about a child soldier who managed to escape from his captors after becoming an adult, came to Atlanta as a refugee, and was informed that he could not stay because he had “provided support” to a terrorist organization, even though he had done so at gunpoint and against his will.
In late March, Catholic Charities, the IRC and several other organizations devoted to refugees and immigrants in the metro area were relieved to learn that USCIS, under a provision signed into law by President George Bush in December, will now reconsider green card applications that were denied on such grounds.
A memo from Jonathan Scharfen, deputy director of USCIS, dated March 26, states “until further notice adjudicators are to withhold adjudication of cases in which the only ground(s) for referral or denial is a terrorist-related inadmissibility provision.” They are also to put on hold those cases where the applicant performed the questionable activities under duress, and/or was a member of one of 10 groups whose status has been questioned or even designated “terrorist” by U.S. officials (see “Groups No Longer Considered Terrorist Organizations” on this page). Among those refugees who found their status questioned were members of Hmong and Montagnard communities—groups that were allied with America in the Vietnam War.

“The ‘material support’ bar is the ultimate in unintended consequences,” says Chuck Cook, an Atlanta attorney who was recently elected president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Cook says one seminal problem is that oversight of the cases is reassigned as the asylum seeker or immigrant enters the United States. Overseas, refugee cases are considered the responsibility of the state department and are handled by American embassies. Here in the U.S., however, they become the responsibility of the DHS, and the two agencies have approaches that are not necessarily complementary.

Chris Rhatigan, spokeswoman for USCIS, however, counters that it was DHS that asked for the new provision to be included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008.

“We wanted to be able to look at applications on a case-by-case basis. There had been a number of cases that had fallen between the cracks,” says Rhatigan.
And there are plenty more cracks to close, according to Cook, who says the new provision will probably affect only a couple thousand applicants. He says not just refugee policies, but the entire immigration system needs an overhaul, from policy, to the immigration courts, to the forms themselves.

“We need to fix the whole system,” he says. “Unfortunately, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], USCIS, etcetera have done all they can. Now, it’s up to Congress.”

Immigration forms’ trick questions

Immigration forms are notoriously complex, particularly for immigrants, who are, after all, the point of the whole frustrating shebang. The Sunday Paper has found literally hundreds of Web sites offering immigration form assistance, most of them aimed at would-be green card holders. None disclose prices. Many feature flashing banners that read “Live and Work in the U.S.A.!” Most warn menacingly that errors could result in denial or even deportation, so it’s best to let the “professionals” do the paperwork.

“The forms themselves are inaccurate,” says Cook. “The instructions are misleading. It requires decades’ worth of policy guidance to fill them out without error. Consider this wonderful question on the green card application: ‘Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not arrested?’ Think about that.”
Americans, for example, routinely break the law by speeding. If a green card applicant is guilty of the same thing and answers the question honestly, says Cook, he or she will be denied and in danger of deportation. The system, he says, encourages immigrants to maintain an illegal status.

It also encourages an illegal shadow industry of notarios—people who “help” immigrants fill out forms without any experience or knowledge in the matter. Catholic Charities’ Colussy relates how one woman arrested in rural north Georgia for posing as an application assistant was simply plugging in the same three narratives to hundreds of applications, resulting in their denial. Another woman, in Tifton, Ga., “assisted” an undocumented worker and his American wife in filling out his adjustment of status application for $1,000, resulting in his now-pending deportation—despite the fact that his disabled child is an American citizen. 

Like Cook, Colussy says Congress has to fix our immigration policies, but she’s afraid that they may fall prey to the same political motivations that led them to enact the faulty “material support” bar.

“The process is far more complicated than it needs to be,” she says. “But anytime Congress tries to do anything with it, they are too influenced by people who have their own agendas.” SP

Groups no longer considered terrorist organizations

Immigrants whose green card applications were denied because of affiliation with the following groups, will now have their status reconsidered.

Group—Country of Origin

• Karen National Union/Karen Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA)—Burma
• Chin National Front/Chin National Army (CNF/CNA)—Burma
• China National League for Democracy (CNLD)—Burma
• Kayan New Land Party (KNLP)—Burma
• Arakan Liberation Party—Burma
• Tibetan Mustangs—Tibet, Nepal
• Cuban Alzados—Cuba
• Karenni National Progressive Party—Burma
• Ethnic Hmong groups—Vietnam
• Montagnards/Front Unifie de Lutte des Races Opprimes (FULRO)—Vietnam