Thread: Wood fails to get illegal immigrant wife back in U.S.

Wood fails to get illegal immigrant wife back in U.S.
By: Cindy Gonzalez, WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
09/01/2008
Updated 09/02/2008 08:33:52 AM CDT

Joe Wood is giving up.


He plans to take his young daughters to their mother in Mexico, and is trying to sell the family's trailer so he can pay their rent there.


His turning point comes after 15 months of pounding on politicians' doors and pleading with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

He has paid thousands of dollars in lawyer fees, schooled himself on immigration policy and even tried to tell his story to the president when George Bush visited Omaha last December.

Still, the woman he married when she was an illegal immigrant -- the mother of daughters Vanessa, 7, and Melissa, 2 -- remains forever banned from re-entering the United States. As reported last year, Laura Roldan Wood has been stuck in Mexico since a May 2007 interview to fix her immigration status went awry.

"I'm done,'' said Joe Wood, 41, whose recent on-the-job injury has reduced his paychecks. "My brain is fried. I'm broke and have nowhere to turn.''

The dream of living in the country where Wood's three oldest children reside and where he and Laura Wood thought it best to raise their two U.S.-born daughters appears futile, he said.

Wood joins a growing number of U.S.-born spouses whose families have been stung by immigration policies.

Alison Brown, an attorney with Justice for Our Neighbors in Nebraska represents three mothers who recently uprooted and moved children to a U.S. border town to be closer to their fathers who are temporarily prohibited from re-entering the states.

Another of Brown's clients, in South Sioux City, Neb., recently divorced amid the stress of a similar separation. A support group has cropped up in Nebraska for more U.S. citizens divided from their partners because of immigration legal entanglements.

"This is a very harsh climate we're in now,'' said Doris Meissner, former head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service now with the Migration Policy Institute. "Mr. Wood demonstrates at a human level some of the dire consequences that can happen.''

Prior to a 1996 law, U.S.-born children provided considerable leverage in cases where the government was petitioned to waive penalties for unlawful entrants with compelling circumstances. Gone is most of the previous latitude, Meissner said.

Comparing the climate to a pressure cooker, Omaha attorney Amy Peck said Congress can relieve tension by updating laws that she said impose unreasonable hardship on U.S. family members.

"I think we've reached the maximum temperature before it blows,'' Peck said.

Still, a comprehensive revamping of immigration laws -- something that both sides agree is needed -- would not necessarily guarantee family reunification in all situations. Plenty of people stand firm against any change that appears to forgive law-breaking immigrants.

Meanwhile, many choose not to do anything to remedy a loved one's status, for fear of separation. Others take a chance, because they have a greater fear that laws could become even more restrictive.

The Woods' gamble backfired.

Joe Wood still reels from what he calls his foolish attempt to "do the right thing.''

He has spent $11,000, some for a lawyer who told him his wife's case was solid.

Because Laura Wood had entered and lived in the country unlawfully, she had to go back to her homeland to adjust her status.

She, Wood and their kids traveled to Juarez, Mexico, knowing that a multiyear bar would kick in as a punishment to Laura Wood for living in the United States illegally. They also knew that a waiver of that bar was possible and that she, without a criminal record, was a prime candidate.

Instead, the Woods were stunned when a consular officer accused Laura Wood, 33, of admitting during an interview that she had used a U.S. identity when she had crossed the border in 2001. It was an offense punishable by a lifetime ban.

Though the Woods deny that Laura Wood had made any such admission, her bar remains intact.

Vanessa and Melissa initially remained in Mexico with their mom, but the Woods decided the girls would be better off in Nebraska than in crowded and impoverished conditions in Mexico. The girls returned to Nebraska last November.

"It turned out to be harder than I thought,'' Joe Wood said.

A car crash last winter put the family car out of commission. Child care costs -- Laura Wood had been a stay-at-home mom -- were high, and Joe Wood had to tap public assistance.

The housing slump led to fewer hours at a builder's supply company. Wood injured his arm lifting, had to have surgery and sent the girls to stay with a friend while he recovered.

The last straw was when a tearful Vanessa urged her dad to go get her mother. "Put her under two blankets and keep driving,'' the second-grader told him.

That's when Wood paid his most recent visit to U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel's office, asking an aide to explain to his daughters why their mom can't come back.

Wood later said that he takes the blame for not exploring all the consequences.

He figures he can move the girls to Mexico and pay for their rent and food cheaper there than here. And he would visit them occasionally while his workman's compensation case is processed.


He said he'd find somewhere to lay his own head here.

"I hate to sound like a whiny baby,'' he said, "but I am so lost. I have run out of options.''

Contact the writer
444-1224,
cindy.gonzalez(at)owh.com




http://www.kearneyhub.com/site/news.cfm ... 7571&rfi=6

This should be broadcast far and wide so legal citizens do a little checking before they marry and have children with illegals.

Duplicate please reply at original thread at
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-130304-0.html