Thread: Deported to a foreign land

Another Immigration Sob Story:
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Deported to a foreign land
For Illinois mom, Poland no longer feels like home
By Tom Hundley Tribune foreign correspondent
September 23, 2007

LUBAWSKIE, Poland—Janina Wasilewski's universe has shrunk dramatically. The sadness and strain can be read in her drawn face.

"Everything seems so small," she said, not in response to any particular question, but more as a general commentary on the situation in which she finds herself.

Starting with her apartment. Two rooms, combined they measure no more than 15 feet by 18 feet. The bedroom contains a secondhand foldaway bed she shares with her 6-year-old son, Brian. The building itself is old and in poor repair, cracked stucco peeling away from the raw brick. A village drunk takes morning refuge in the shadows.

Wasilewski's life in this cramped town on the fringes of Poland's rural poverty seems light-years away from the suburban normalcy of Schiller Park, Ill., from the three-bedroom ranch she shared with her husband and the life in America they spent 18 years building.

"Brian had a playroom and a trampoline," she said, and the memory of it all causes her voice to crack.

A stroke of misfortune
Her son's U.S. citizenship came as his birthright, but she has ended up with him here as a result of the vagaries of U.S. immigration and naturalization laws that last week bestowed citizenship upon her husband, a fellow Polish emigre, but three months ago banished her, declaring her ineligible to apply for re-entry to the U.S. for 10 years.

Wasilewski, 41, and her husband, Tony, are fighting the ruling. They have hired lawyers and written to political leaders. Tony Wasilewski was in Washington recently testifying before Congress.

But for now, Janina Wasilewski faces a strange and uncomfortable life in the country she fled in 1989. She was a student then and an activist in the Solidarity labor movement that was soon to topple the decrepit communist regime.

Wasilewski feared her involvement in anti-government protests had caught the attention of police and so decided to lie low in Chicago, where she had relatives. She entered the U.S. legally and applied for political asylum. She almost certainly was entitled to asylum, but by the time her case was processed in 1994, immigration officials ruled that the now-democratic Poland no longer posed a threat to her.

She hired a lawyer and appealed. At a 1995 hearing that Wasilewski says she did not understand, her lawyer agreed that she would voluntarily leave the country. She didn't leave, and became one of the many illegal immigrants the U.S. government has lost track of.

In the meantime, she met and married Tony Wasilewski, and together they built a successful office- and home-cleaning business. After several miscarriages, she gave birth to Brian in 2001. "For us, Brian is a miracle," she said.

Wasilewski tried to correct her immigration situation in 1998, but that only put her back on the government's radar, leading to the deportation proceedings that culminated in her tearful departure from O'Hare International Airport three months ago.

Although she grew up in a village that borders Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, she was returning to a Poland that is now as alien to her as the United States was 18 years ago.

"I feel no connection to this country. I have to learn everything from A to Z," Wasilewski said. "Even if I try to find old friends, they have moved from here; they have their own lives."

Front-page tragedy
Poles, with so many family connections in America, are interested in the U.S. immigration debate. Wasilewski's story made the front pages here, but the headlines have been harsh.

"Polish Lady Kicked Out of U.S.," said her older sister, Maria Danelczyk, summarizing the headlines' tone. Danelczyk lives nearby and has helped Wasilewski settle in.

"I think the journalists tried to show the tragedy, but this is a small town, and people don't understand," Danelczyk said. "They think she must have done something bad for the American immigration officials to send her back. Or they think that if she lived 18 years in America she must be rich, so why should they feel sorry for her."

Brian, enrolled in the town's Pope John Paul II Public School No. 1, appears to have made a good adjustment. Although he holds U.S. citizenship and is entitled to remain in the U.S., his parents decided he needed to be with his mother. He is bilingual but now seems to prefer Polish.

"Only in the first moments were the other children curious about him. Now he is accepted," said Ewa Kijora, the school's principal. "As far as I know, Brian has made the adjustment."

Brian is sunny and playful, but he says he misses his friends from Chicago and his room.

Wasilewski said that despite outward appearances, her son was deeply troubled by the fracture of the family.

"He doesn't understand why he can't see Daddy. I try to explain to him, but he doesn't want to talk about it. He gets angry," she said.

The tiny apartment is immaculate. Wasilewski cleans obsessively. Besides walking Brian to school, there is little else to do in this one-stoplight town.

"I shop for food. I watch television. I visit with my mother. Nothing else," said Wasilewski, who speaks with her husband by phone twice a day. "I have to talk about what's going on with me and Brian," she said.

There is no chance for a job here. The unemployment rate in the area is about 30 percent.

Wasilewski has no car. Warsaw and Gdansk, the nearest big cities, are four or five hours away by bus.

With each day, her universe seems to grow a little smaller, her life more constricted. She said she simply cannot face the idea of living here and apart from her husband for 10 years.

thundley@tribune.com

Just think, if our government had of been doing its job this child would have never been born on American soil and would not be caught in the middle of crooked politicians and his parents. His mother would have been deported when her visa expired setting a very good example for those that want to break our laws instead of confusing the issue by lack of enforcement.

Re:

She hired a lawyer and appealed. At a 1995 hearing that Wasilewski says she did not understand, her lawyer agreed that she would voluntarily leave the country.

Uh-huh..... riiiiiiiiigggghhht. So what did she do???

She didn't leave, and became one of the many illegal immigrants the U.S. government has lost track of.

I'm sorry for her family, but she chose to take the nefarious path and doesn't deserve any special treatment because of it.
Karma is a biatch, isn't it? ...No sympathy from me.


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