HER DYING WISH : Mother Hopes to See Son

Sonia Siguenza is on a life-support system at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, complications from a blood disease steadily sapping her life.

Her doctor says these surely are her final days. During the last month, as the 25-year-old woman has lapsed in and out of a coma, she has told her husband, Israel, that she would like one last visit with her 9-year-old son, Walter, who has been living with her parents in her native El Salvador.

But young Walter Siguenza’s final visit with his mother is mired in a tangle of immigration law and consular protocol. Officials have turned down requests for a special visa, saying they fear Walter, who was born in El Salvador, will remain with his parents and not return to his country, in defiance of immigration quotas.

With the help of his wife’s doctor and U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), Israel Siguenza has spent the last few weeks appealing to officials of the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, as well as to officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But the answer is still no, and Siguenza grows more desperate as he feels his wife’s life slipping away hastily like sand through an hourglass.

“I am doing my best to grant her wishes,” he said this week, his voice breaking. “She wants to see her son. And that’s why I went to El Salvador and tried my best. But my best is not good enough.”

Siguenza, 28, a car salesman in Costa Mesa, has lived in Santa Ana for 10 years. He and his wife have two children, Walter, 9, and a 21-month-old daughter whom he is caring for here.

When doctors discovered last year that Sonia Siguenza was suffering from an infectious blood disease, she and Israel sent Walter to live with his grandparents in the Salvadoran town of Santa Ana. But now that doctors say she has very little time left, Sonia Siguenza wants to see her son one last time.

Two weeks ago, Siguenza took some of his savings and traveled to El Salvador to personally appeal to officials at the U.S. Embassy to grant his son a temporary visa. He hand-delivered a letter from his wife’s doctor, Michael Fitzgibbons of Irvine, saying she does not have long to live. Also, at the request of Fitzgibbons, Sen. Wilson wrote a letter dated May 29 to State Department officials asking that the boy be granted a visa.

But in their response to Wilson’s letter, State Department officials said that “each person must demonstrate ties of such strength to his country of residence” that the agency is confident he will return. “Mr. Siguenza’s inability to present such evidence (of strong ties) left the interviewing consular officer with no choice but to deny his application,” the letter said.

Adult applicants, for example, can show they have jobs or families to return to in their native countries, a spokesman explained.

But “if the parents of the applicant are both in the U.S., then it’s much harder to prove” that the boy would return to El Salvador, said Dave Denny, a spokesman for the State Department in Washington.

Siguenza, who has legal residency in the United States, said he tried to assure the officials that he would take his son back to El Salvador after a week’s visit.

“I told them, ‘I will give you my green card right now and you can restrict me if I don’t bring him back.’ I’m even willing to lose my residency here,” he said.

“I’m willing to do anything to make her wishes come through,” he said. “The doctors and the others know that. I pray to God, and sometimes I think that not even God is listening to me.”

Franz Wisner, Wilson’s deputy press secretary in Washington, said that they only received a copy of the State Department response on Tuesday but that his office will continue to see if it can help Siguenza.

“Now the senator is able to pinpoint what problem the State Department has with the visa application, he can act as a middleman to try to get some of that resolved so that Walter can come here,” he said.

Fitzgibbons, Sonia Siguenza’s doctor, described his patient as “a very gentle, self-effacing and committed mother who has rarely thought about herself.”

“Her main thoughts are always about her children,” he said. “She is afraid of the tragedy that is going to befall the family once she is gone. She is worried about how she can arrange for her family’s needs to be met.”

He said he also is frustrated that Walter is not being allowed to come visit.

“It’s unlikely that El Salvador will allow her remains to return,” Fitzgibbons said. “So not only can Walter not see his mother alive, but he probably also cannot even see his mother’s grave, which to me is totally inhumane.

“That was the reason she was staying alive, only to see her son,” he said.