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Posted on Tue, Jul. 26, 2005



Life is cruel, immigration crueler yet

By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News

First of two parts.

Katka Zajicova didn't think the world could be any crueler than it was the day a camper plowed into her family's car, killing her husband, knocking her unconscious and leaving their young daughter as a witness to her father's death.

Turns out, she underestimated the U.S. immigration system's capacity to deliver despair.

Zajicova can ponder that now that her 17-month battle to stay in the United States is lost. Today Zajicova and her 3-year-old are in the Czech Republic, coping with life as newcomers in their own country.

``I have to rebuild my life from zero,'' Zajicova said the day after arriving in Ostrava. ``I have to find a place to live. I have to help Sara to adjust, help her with the language, because she doesn't speak much Czech.''

Her trip from San Francisco to Prague was the end of a long lesson during which Zajicova learned how compassionate America's people are and how bewildering and unaccountable its immigration system is.

No, it wasn't supposed to turn out this way. The hideous accident on a beautiful stretch of Highway 1 changed everything.

``Something like that happens to you in a strange country and suddenly in one second, your whole life is totally swept away.''

Two happy years

Zajicova, 34, and her daughter moved to the United States in 2002 to join Zajicova's husband, Zdenek Zajic, a software engineer on an H-1B visa. They lived in Aldercroft Heights. For Zajicova it was a life of moms' groups and family outings.

``We were just a happy family,'' she says. ``Really happy.''

On a trip to the beach in February 2004, Zajic stopped the family's small Ford near Davenport to turn left toward the beach. A camper rear-ended the Ford and pushed it into an oncoming pickup truck.

Zajic and the family dog, Alaska, were killed instantly. Sara was spattered with blood. She was trapped in the car with her dead father and unconscious mother for 10 to 15 minutes, Zajicova says.

After the accident, Sara started coloring her dolls' faces red. She covered them with blankets. Zajicova found her a therapist and the counseling appeared to help.

A plan to stay

It helped Zajicova, too, who found inspiration. Though her eligibility to remain in the country expired with her husband's death, she had a plan to stay and keep up Sara's therapy.

She would obtain a student visa and enroll in Santa Clara University's graduate psychology program. The study would help her with Sara's behavior and with her own despair. The knowledge would help with her job once she returned to the Czech Republic, where she is a federal judge.

Zajicova got a visitor's visa and waited for word on her student visa.

Life was looking up. Mother and daughter were settling into the Santa Cruz mountains. Neighbors offered comfort. Sara and Zajicova made friends at Sara's preschool and at a local horse riding stable.

Zajicova started attending Skyland Community Church, where she met the Wetherill family. Little Jack was a bit younger than Sara and became like a brother. Jack's mother, Gina, was something of a soul mate.

``The friend I had been looking for turned out to be her,'' Gina Wetherill said.

Zajicova was accepted at Santa Clara University. She could support herself. She owned property in the Czech Republic and had a job waiting there -- signs that she intended to return after her studies.

And staying in the United States was best for Sara. Sending her back to the Czech Republic would be an ``extreme hardship,'' SCU psychology professor Eleanor Willemsen wrote to immigration authorities.

``In general,'' she said later, ``it's a major dumb idea to suddenly dislodge a child from the only world she has ever known and take her to a country that is totally unfamiliar.''

To a reasonable person, Zajicova's visa looked like a certainty.

But Zajicova would soon learn that when it comes to U.S. immigration policy, very little is reasonable and nothing is certain.