Thread: Metro Detroit girl puts a face on immigration bill

Metro Detroit girl puts a face on immigration bill


WASHINGTON -- A U.S. Senate panel put a Michigan face on a controversial immigration bill Tuesday.

Ola Kaso of Sterling Heights is 18 and has lived in the U.S. since she was 5, when her parents emigrated from Albania legally.

But they lost a bid for asylum -- in part, they say, because of an immigration lawyer's mistake. Earlier this year, federal officials informed Ola and her mother, Violeta Kaso, they would be deported.

Ola, an A-plus student in high school who is headed to the University of Michigan where she plans to study medicine, was cited by supporters of the DREAM Act on Tuesday as an example of the need for legislation that would clear a path toward letting minors brought into the country to remain.

Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, Ola said she and her mother were to be deported this spring until U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and others stepped in and won a one-year delay. She faces deportation next year.

"In late March, I was told I would be deported in less than a week. I was two weeks short of obtaining my high school diploma. How could I be sent to a place I did not remember?" Ola said. "I have considered one country, and one country only, to be my home. America is my home, not Albania."

The DREAM -- or Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors -- Act has been on the legislative agenda for a few years.

Supporters say it offers a fair way of dealing with minors brought into the U.S. as children, educated here and who want to stay. Critics argue that it is a form of amnesty and could encourage more illegal immigration.

"What parent would not be tempted to come illegally in the hope that, if not them, at least their children could get the gift of American citizenship?" said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

The latest incarnation of the bill would allow for conditional permanent resident status in cases where a person -- age 35 or younger at the time of the bill's passage -- can show he or she entered the U.S. before age 15; has been in the U.S. for five or more years, and is "of good moral character."

The conditional permanent resident status would last six years, during which time the person could stay by completing at least two years in a degree program or serving in the military for at least two years.

Contact TODD SPANGLER: 202-906-8203 or tspangler@freepress.com. Gannett Washington bureau reporter Erin Kelly contributed to this report.



http://www.freep.com/article/20110629/NEWS15/106290373

Change her name to Ola Hernandez and she's good to go.