Thread: Couple fight deportation after 20+ years

Quote:
Pedro Servano, 54, is a prominent family doctor in an underserved area of central Pennsylvania.

How does an illegal alien practice medicine in this country legally?

Doesn't state what county he got his medical degree in. Assuming it was the Philippines based on his age. Most foreign trained doctors have to undergo additional training in the U.S. and in order to practice in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania would have had to grant him as license.

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion." Article IV Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.

The Servanos applied for U.S. citizenship while living in San Diego in 1990, but an immigration official noticed during an interview that their visa application listed them as single. They were accused of lying and misrepresenting their marital status, and the deportation process began, Cotler said.

17 years later and they still haven't been deported?

After 20 years in U.S., couple faces deportation on a technicality

BY JOHN BEAUGE / For The Patriot-News, 11/16/07 10:01 PM EST
UPDATED: 11/17/07 12:16 AM EST

SELINSGROVE Dr. Pedro Servano and his wife, Salvacion, “are America ... a family to parade across the world’s stage as an example of our nation’s best and brightest.â€

Published: November 15, 2007 11:05 pm

Couple without a country

Doctor and wife to be deported for paperwork error

By Damian Gessel
The Daily Item (Sunbury, Pa.)

SELINSGROVE, Pa. — On Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving, Dr. Pedro Servano — a prominent local physician, business owner and father of four — and his wife, Salvacion, will leave their home in Selinsgrove and drive north along Route 15.

They will take with them travel documents, luggage, pictures of their children, keepsakes of the American life they’ve lived for 23 years. All of it together must weigh less than 80 pounds. They will leave the more than 2,000 patients Dr. Servano has cared for as a general practitioner in Hummels Wharf, the hundreds of customers who frequented Mrs. Servano’s bakery in Sunbury, the community that welcomed the Servanos with open arms.

Arriving at Allenwood Federal Prison Complex, they will don brown khakis and shirts — their names and inmate numbers imprinted in black — and join a population of prisoners behind bars.

For weeks, maybe months, they will wait for a plane to fill with passengers.

When it does, they will be deported to the Philippines, their homeland, but a country that now holds nothing for them.

They will be forced to leave their family, their jobs, the elderly mothers they had been taking care of and who they likely will never see again.

And unless a last-ditch effort by a team of lawyers succeeds in buying them more time, all of these things will have happened to the Servanos because two immigration documents were filled out incorrectly in 1978.

The Servanos’ situation has inspired dozens of letters of support from area leaders and friends, along with an online petition signed by hundreds of sympathizers. U.S. Rep. Chris Carney, D-Dimock, Sunbury Mayor Jesse Woodring, Northumberland Police Chief Tim Fink and others have implored the Department of Homeland Security to reconsider its decision to deport the Servanos.

In fact, one of the Department of Homeland Security’s own employees wrote a letter asking his organization to overturn its ruling.

In a lengthy letter, counter-terrorism operative Bill Schweigart wrote: “I am deeply disturbed and saddened by ICE’s plans to deport the Servanos... . They have four children; the oldest recently graduated from Temple University and is a member of ROTC, while the youngest is an honor student in middle school who has earned academic awards from Gov. Edward G. Rendell, Sen. Arlen Specter, Mrs. Cheney and first lady Laura Bush.â€

Dr. Pedro Servano and his wife, Salvacion, sit in the living room of their Selinsgrove, Pa., home, Thursday evening, Nov. 15, 2007. They face deportation to their native Philippines unless their lawyers can salvage their 17 year-long immigration case with last-ditch legal and political appeals

I can't see them being deported if the story they tell is what really happened. There is a whole lot more here that we don't know about.

How can you accidentally & innocently check "single" when you are married? It's just as stupid as checking "female" when you're a man! Who are these people trying to kid? When filling out govt forms, we all try to be really careful to read and check the right boxes, right? (Especially our 1040s. Hhaha)

So, to me, they intentionally lied on their application. They had to lie because there was a case already opened -- the original petition of their mothers. They knew this, so they pretended they were single.

How did the INS agent know they were married? If they had continued the charade of being, maybe INS would've approved them. Am I missing something here?

This is fraud in filing the papers. Isn't that grounds for revocation of citizenship and deportation had they actually been declared citizens?

Why are they still here and who protected them all this time? Those people need to be charged for aiding and abetting in the fraud.

Originally Posted by mkfarnam

Originally Posted by corhanem

Yikes! I live less than an hour from Selinsgrove and Sunbury, and my son is seen by one of Geisinger's "child neurodevelopmental specialists." This is very scary for me, it's hitting too close to home.

Are you registered with "Hazleton" Topix forum?
I'm one of the News Editors for "Hazleton, Pa. Topix (online) News. (same username)
http://www.topix.com/city/hazleton-pa

Yes, I apparently signed up there last winter and forgot about it. I'm baaa--aaacckkk.

I think immigration works like this

applicant > Visa > legal resident > citizen

In between applying and actually getting the visa to go to the states they got married. So that check box was before they aloped some time after. The offense is based on the fact that they didn't update the application. Applications can take years to process so they prolly forgot about the check box. It had no effect of their eligibility because they both had family which are well established here in the US, so they were set anyway.

(Her father was a POW survivor of the Bataan Death March, and his brother was in the NAVY; both very good points, but weren't mentioned.)

So when they say clerical error, they really mean clerical. a check box.

As a legal resident, you can work and pay taxes. When an error like this is found, you don't go to an illegal status. Now if they don't show up to that prison the day after thanksgiving, thats when they will be considered illegal. Until then, they can continue to work and pay taxes.