Aliens Finally Win Approval to Visit Sick Father in Mexico

Twice before in December, Reginaldo and Maria de Rosario Gama Garcia of Santa Ana had gone to their local Immigration and Naturalization Service office, hoping for permission to visit their seriously ill father in Mexico. And twice they had left empty-handed.

But when they returned to the INS office Thursday, they got the red carpet treatment.

“They were very, very cordial,” said Nativo Lopez, executive director of the Latino activist group called Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. Lopez had accompanied the Garcias on all three visits.

“The examining officer did not show any antagonism,” Lopez said. “It went very smoothly.” The Garcias had the necessary papers in 90 minutes, he said.

It was no surprise. On Wednesday, Harold Ezell, western regional commissioner for the INS, announced that illegal aliens who appear to be eligible for the newly authorized amnesty will be given “advance parole,” allowing them to leave the United States briefly and return “for a legitimate emergency or humanitarian purpose.”

Reginaldo Garcia, 32, and his sister, Maria, 37, say they have been in the United States 15 and seven years respectively, long enough to qualify for amnesty under the new immigration law. Theirs is “a clear case of an emergency need, and they’ll be on their way . . .,” Ezell said.

That was an about-face for the INS, which only eight days earlier had told the Garcias that such requests would not be granted regardless of circumstances.

Then circumstances changed. Lopez contacted the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights Inc., which scheduled a Thursday afternoon hearing on the Garcias’ case before a federal district judge in Sacramento.

But soon after that hearing was scheduled, new instructions came to Ezell from INS headquarters in Washington: Grant such requests when warranted.

On Thursday, the Garcias stood outside the INS office in Santa Ana and held up their “advance parole” papers for photographers. Lopez said the hearing would be canceled.

“I feel very sad because of the state of my father, and at the same time I’m very happy because I was able to obtain the permission,” said Reginaldo Garcia through Lopez, who acted as interpreter.

He said he, his sister and his sister’s 4-year-old daughter will leave for Guadalajara as soon as time off from their jobs can be arranged. He works as a carpenter for a building contractor, and she works as an assembler for a computer firm.

Garcia said he is anxious to go because his father’s condition is wavering between “turns for the worse” and temporary recoveries. The father, 77-year-old Adrian Garcia Gonzalez, is in a hospital in Guadalajara suffering from chronic blood, kidney, heart and lung ailments, Lopez said.

Saying he was “very much satisfied” with the outcome of the Garcia case, Lopez handed out written statements claiming that only the family’s “resolve” and “swift legal action” prodded the INS, “perhaps grudgingly . . . to rectify errors committed by its offices in interpreting the many elements of the law.”

“Our concern was not just for the Garcias,” Lopez said. “This case is the epitome and will assist thousands of families nationwide.”

He said he hopes the case “shows the INS that this and other organizations will be vigilant in seeing that the laws are administered humanely.”