Thread: Legal Humanitarian Visa Denied - Illegal Aliens Rewarded

This article is a typical example of the hypocrisy of our current immigration policy. So much for the “compassion” that George Bush touts in his immigration proposals. Those who pursue legal immigration are so often denied or thwarted by the regulations, while those who crash the border, hurling rocks at Border Patrol agents and burning the American flag, are greeted as “honest, hardworking people” and offered amnesty by Mr. Bush, with the blessings of the Catholic Church. Where is the justice, the fairness, or the morality, in our policies?


US Refuses to give Visa to Sick Orphan

By MARCUS KABEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

JOPLIN, Mo. -- Melvin Karges and his wife Cheryl know about helping southeast Asian orphans. Their daughter Claira, now 2 1/2 years old, was adopted from Cambodia with a hole in her heart that was successfully treated here in the United States.

Pam and Randy Cope of Neosho, friends of the Karges', adopted two children in Vietnam and started a nonprofit organization that helps orphanages and other shelters in Vietnam and Cambodia.
But even after successful adoptions and charity work, the Kargeses and the Copes have run into an unexpected barrier in their joint effort to help a Vietnamese orphan boy get urgent medical help in Missouri that he can't get in Vietnam.

The U.S. government has refused to issue a medical visa or a humanitarian waiver for 6-year-old Tuan Van Cao. The couples are confused and frustrated, saying they have lined up private funding to cover treatment for a botched operation on the boy's diseased left hip that left him with a potentially fatal bone infection.

Comment: Note they have lined up private funding to cover expenses. Yet illegal aliens are somehow entitled to taxpayer funded medical care and other social services.

Despite submitting written opinions from U.S. and Vietnamese doctors that Tuan needs urgent help that he cannot get in Vietnam, the families have been told to try the lengthy processing of international adoption, which can take a year or more.

"We're kind of reeling right now," said Karges, a physician. "I'm puzzled, because if you read the guidelines for humanitarian (waiver), Tuan fits."

Comment: According to regulations posted on the US Citizenship and Immigration Service website, this child does meet the guidelines. An application for a humanitarian waiver requires a $170 application fee and an affidavit of support from the sponsors, which serves as a contract guaranteeing the federal and state governments that the sponsor takes full responsibility for the financial support, including medical expenses, of the child. These are roughly the same requirements for all legal family based immigration cases. It should be noted that in past amnesty programs, there is no requirement for illegal aliens seeking amnesty to have a sponsor or provide an affidavit of support.

Tuan was admitted to a Ho Chi Minh City hospital Sunday for emergency treatment because the infection in his hip bone has started spreading, said Pam Cope, who first discovered Tuan's case. He will have to undergo surgery that opens the bone to more infection, even though the hospital's orthopedic surgeon has said the treatment is too risky to perform in Vietnam.

"Tuan's case is black and white. He needs emergency medical treatment and we can give him free medical treatment here in the United States," Cope said.

The experience is all too common, especially since Congress in 1997 changed the law to make immigration more difficult, said Roy Petty, an immigration lawyer in Rogers, Ark., who has handled several similar cases but is not involved in Tuan's case.

Comment: It should be noted that the Congress has made Legal Immigration more difficult, while at the same time granting one amnesty after another to illegal aliens. Is there any sense of justice or fairness in our immigration policies??

"Americans are goodhearted people. They find kids abroad who need help and then when they ask the government for help, they get told 'no, we're not pro-immigrant these days,'" he said.

Comment: It should be clarified that the government, under the administration of George Bush, is not pro-legal immigrant. It is, however, very much pro-illegal migrant.

The Kargeses have said they would be Tuan's host family and hope eventually to adopt him. The Copes' charity, Neosho-based "Touch a Life," first sought a medical visa for Tuan last fall but was turned down by the U.S. embassy's consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon. The consulate said he was an orphan who might stay in the U.S. after treatment.

The consulate suggested they seek the humanitarian parole waiver from an office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the Parole and Humanitarian Assistance Branch. Immigration and Customs is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Kargeses, who helped recruit Freeman Health System in Joplin to pledge free medical treatment, applied in December for humanitarian parole and submitted a raft of supporting documents, including a letter from the hospital in Ho Chi Minh City that the care Tuan needs is not available in Vietnam.

They also have supporting letters from both of Missouri's U.S. senators, Republicans Kit Bond and Jim Talent, and a U.S. medical statement that Tuan's bone infection could spread at any time through his system and become fatal.

Two months later, the Kargeses received a brief letter rejecting a humanitarian waiver. The only reason cited by Kenneth Leutbecker, director of the humanitarian office, is that the application "appears designed to circumvent or shortcut normal immigrant visa processing requirements."

Comment: The immigration policy of the United States currently rewards those who circumvent the law by sneaking into the country. Note also that it takes at least a year to process an international adoption visa case. The purpose of Humanitarian Waivers is to address an emergency situation. This child will likely die waiting for a regular immigration visa. In any case, those who follow the rules and attempt to immigrate legally are subject to long waiting periods and considerable expense in obtaining a immigrant visa or a temporary non-immigrant visa. In this case, the humanitarian waiver would be a temporary non-immigrant visa that would allow the boy to be in the U.S. for one year only. If his sponsors were to apply for and receive an immigrant visa based on adoption of a foreign born orphan, then he would be able to stay, otherwise he would have to return to Vietnam.
Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the waivers are granted sparingly: More than 6,700 applications were received between Jan. 2000 and last Oct. 6, and 1,465 - about 20 percent - were approved after reviews by two separate officers and their supervisor.

Comment: Yet our President and fellow idiots in congress propose to offer an amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.Rusnok declined to say why Tuan's case was not deemed an urgent humanitarian matter, saying he was not allowed to discuss specific cases. "Humanitarian parole isn't just given to everybody who requests it," he said.

Comment: But legal status is frequently given to illegal aliens through amnesties and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) provisions.
Cope said that on the advice of an immigration lawyer, the Kargeses will seek a waiver from a different U.S. agency under the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection.

That is absolutely disgusting. Does anyone else need any more proof that these fools in gov't don't represent us? What a pile of stinking, steaming horses*it! I'd sure like to have that pencil-pushers phone number, I'd be on him morning, noon and night. That's just plain WRONG!