A family is exiled from the U.S.
By Lynn Brezosky
lbrezosky@express-news.net
Updated 12:02 a.m., Sunday, August 14, 2011

REYNOSA, Mexico — Tom and Yedid Kobylecky now wish they'd stayed silent, quietly living a middle-class life in the suburbs of Chicago and keeping her illegal immigrant status a family secret.

But Yedid's parents in Cuernavaca, Mexico, were struggling to keep a taqueria stand going despite her diabetic father's sore-ridden feet and her mother's failing legs. As entrepreneurs, neither qualified for any government medical care. Yedid wired money from cleaning and baby-sitting jobs to help them buy medicines, but longed to be able to travel to see them.

And so, four years after meeting at the Home Depot where he worked, three years after marrying, a year after their son Teddy was born, they decided to petition for her visa.

“We just wanted to be an honest family, and I didn't like staying in the shadows,â€