Tears for a Dream of America : ‘I’m rotting away. . . . My God, won’t someone turn just one little wheel?’

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . . “ She’s been arrested three times, jailed twice, deported once and hunted through the night by armed agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

They’ve chased her on foot and in cars across back yards, down side streets, through alleys and on freeways.

Even now as she busies herself weaving macrame planters in the living room of her tiny Studio City apartment, she keeps one eye on the kitchen window, ready to run.

If necessary, she would once more dismantle her life to flee from those who, with relentless determination, seek her permanent deportation from the United States.

So what do we have here, you wonder. A world-class drug-dealer? An advocate of violent overthrow? A Russian spy?

No, no and no. Then who is this woman and why in God’s name are they after her?

Her name is Norma Novelli, and she’s an illegal immigrant. Because of that, and only that, the Immigration and Naturalization Service will spare no effort to deport her.

This 48-year-old mother of four, whose main crime is naivete, is an embarrassment to the system’s sense of order and cannot be allowed to remain in America.

I met her one day on a street corner distributing pamphlets that asked for help out of the morass she found herself in.

Her story is oddly compelling.

It begins in 1975 when she left England to escape the unbearable memory of a small daughter killed in a traffic accident.

Her husband and remaining children came with her. She was pregnant at the time with a son who was subsequently born here.

The family had entered the United States on a 3-month visa, and Novelli decided she wanted to make America their home. She counted on help from a brother who had lived here legally many years, but the help never materialized. Their visa ran out and the family began running.

During the course of travail, their marriage fell apart and her husband returned to the United Kingdom.

Husbandless and moneyless, Novelli found herself suddenly the object of pursuit by zealous INS agents and chose to hide rather than try to untangle the web of bureaucracy that was closing around her.

“I felt like a killer,” she said. “They never stopped chasing me.”

She married an almost total stranger in a quest for citizenship, but, under questioning, the man admitted their marriage was a sham and has since disappeared.

Norma Novelli was arrested and, within a few hours, deported to England. Her young son, screaming for his mother, was taken to the home of friends.

But three weeks later, she sneaked back into the United States via a circuitous route through Mexico.

“I wanted to see my son,” she said. “And I wanted to stay in America. I love this country. Is that so hard to understand?”

Even the agents who had driven her out were impressed with Novelli’s tenacity, but their quest to eject her was renewed with no less relentless dedication.

Pursued, harassed, deprived of her passport, without visa or work permit, she has scant hope of getting a good job and, because she isn’t a citizen, no prospects for welfare.

Food stamps are given Paul, now 12, but none to her. Novelli does what she can to supply money for food and rent, from cleaning houses to selling planters. The three other children are on their own.

After her third arrest 18 months ago, she spent eight days in jail and was finally released on bail to await a hearing. It has never been set.

“I’m rotting away,” she said the other day. “I can’t get a job, I can’t get citizenship and I can’t get a hearing. My God, won’t someone turn just one little wheel?”

She has written to legislators without success. They have either handed her off to other legislators, referred her to Immigration or suggested she hire a lawyer. She’s had two lawyers. Neither got her much help. Hire another?

“I can’t afford to feed us,” she said angrily. “How can I afford another lawyer?”

Norma Novelli, by ignoring due process, traded wisdom for the almost childish belief that, in America, everything always works out fine. She has learned, to her pain and bewilderment, that it doesn’t.

But there’s something equally wrong, if not disturbingly immoral, for a government agency to destroy with such commitment one woman’s dreams of a new life in a new land.

There may come a time when there are no borders to impede human transit, when the world, as it should, will belong to everyone.

Until then, Norma Novelli might be better off if she never gets the hearing she’s been promised because a system, once defied, rarely forgives.

To the dismay of many, the lamp doesn’t shine as brightly anymore beside the golden door.