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Ailing illegal immigrant dies after being sent to homeland


By Colleen Mastony
Tribune staff reporter

February 15, 2006

Orlando Lopez, an undocumented Filipino immigrant, was left partially paralyzed by a stroke four years ago. Slowly recovering at a Des Plaines nursing home, he emerged from a near coma, relearning how to walk and talk.

But because Lopez could not pay his medical bills, officials at Ballard Healthcare nursing home bought him a one-way plane ticket and sent him back to the Philippines in November with assurances that an agency there would provide for his care. Lopez agreed to go--he had no choice--but confided to friends: "If I go back, I think I will die."

Last week, his prediction came true. Lopez, 43, died in a hospital, apparently after having a heart attack. On Wednesday, family members planned to hold funeral services in a rural graveyard where they will lay flowers on his casket and bury him amid the hills of his native Bataan province.

The case has stoked anger among the Filipino community in Chicago and raised questions about the practice of sending undocumented immigrants who become disabled in the U.S. back to their home countries, where they might not receive adequate care.

"I'm shocked he was treated this way," said Ting Joven, a representative of the Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago, who called the decision a death sentence. "In the Philippines, if you can't afford to be hospitalized, they will send you home," he said. "You can't afford to buy medicines."

On Tuesday, Eli Pick, executive director of Ballard Healthcare, defended the decision to send Lopez back to the Philippines.

"That was his home," Pick said. "And he expressed a wish to go."

Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that seeks to limit immigration, agreed that the nursing home was correct to send Lopez back home.

"Are we going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on people who were not supposed to be in the country?" Camarota said. "We had already been more than generous by treating him and allowing him to stay for so long."

Lopez came to the U.S. in 1994, planning to find work and send money home to support his family. He had been living in Chicago and working at a hotel when he had a stroke in fall of 2001.

After emergency treatment Lopez went to Ballard for rehabilitation. When he arrived, he couldn't move or talk. The stroke left him with mild to moderate brain damage and paralysis on his left side.

Over three years Lopez slowly improved and eventually learned to use a walker and speak in slow, labored tones. But Lopez did not have health insurance, and because he was undocumented, he did not qualify for Medicaid, the federal-state program that covers heath care for the poor.

His bills reached $263,000, and Ballard officials began urging him to leave. In fall they threatened to call the police if he didn't go.

Lopez flew home Nov. 9 with two weeks worth of medication. At the time, Ballard officials said, Lopez depended on his pills but was otherwise stable and was expected to live. Ballard officials said the Filipino consulate had arranged for a clinic in the Philippines to provide care and medication.

Lopez's family rallied around him. His two grown nephews pushed his wheelchair down the street. His sister massaged his legs, which had been left stiff from the stroke. And his mother cooked meals of rice and fresh fish. On Lopez's 43rd birthday, the family hung balloons and a banner that read: "We love you."

But family and friends said no agency stepped in to provide medication. Patrick Hilado, the official at the consulate who handled the case, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

In the Philippines, experts say, there is no health-care system for the poor, and few people have money for insurance. Lopez's family said he could not afford to see a doctor more than once a month. His medication, including pills that prevented stroke, seizure and heart failure, soon began to run out, relatives and friends said.

A church group in suburban Chicago had been trying to help Lopez by sending him medication. But a recent package mailed at the end of January hadn't arrived yet.

On the morning of Feb. 2, Lopez began having trouble breathing and complained to his family of a headache, according to an e-mail written from the Philippines by his sister, Cornelia Santos. A doctor came to the house and told the family to take Lopez to the hospital, but the family hesitated because they didn't have any money, Santos said.

That evening, Lopez passed out. Family members rushed him to a hospital, about an hour away by car, where he died four days later.

"We loved him a lot. We loved him so much," said Santos, reached this week by phone. The family said it is struggling to pay $4,400 in medical and funeral costs.

Santos said she wished medical officials here had not sent Lopez back to the Philippines.

"It is not the best for him to be home," she said. "The medication isn't sufficient like in the U.S."

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cmastony@tribune.com