Woman Dies After Fulfilling Wish to See Her Son Again

Sonia Siguenza, the terminally ill 25-year-old woman whose final wish was granted when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service issued an emergency visa in June to allow her son to visit her from El Salvador, died Monday morning at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

Siguenza’s husband, Israel Siguenza, was with his wife Sunday night, as he has been almost every night in the 2 1/2 months she has been in the intensive care unit, and kissed her goodby about 11:30 p.m. She died less than two hours later, he said.

“I told her she had beautiful eyes, and she opened her eyes for me, and I kissed her and said goodby,” he said. “It was time. She was already tired. It breaks my heart the way she suffered, but she knew I was there every night and she knew I loved her.”

Sonia Siguenza, a native of El Salvador, contracted an infectious blood disease almost two years ago that had been draining her life. When she learned that she would probably not get better, she asked her husband for a final visit with their 9-year-old son, Walter, whom they had sent to El Salvador to live with his maternal grandparents when Sonia Siguenza grew too weak to care for him.

But her dying wish proved difficult for Israel Siguenza: he was turned down by one official after another in his attempts to get the boy a visa to enter the United States.

While Siguenza, a car salesman in Costa Mesa, is here as a legal resident, his son had not been legalized because he had lived in the United States such a short time.

In late May, Siguenza traveled to El Salvador to personally ask U.S. State Department officials at the American Embassy to grant the boy a visa. But officials turned down his request, telling the distraught father and husband that they believed the boy would violate the restrictions of a temporary visa by attempting to stay in the United States permanently.

Sonia Siguenza’s doctor, Michael Fitzgibbons, then wrote to Sen. Pete Wilson (R.-Calif.) asking for his help. Touched by the story of the family’s tragic plight, Wilson personally appealed to Gene McNary, INS commissioner in Washington, D.C.

The day after hearing from Wilson, McNary authorized a “humanitarian visa” for the boy, which authorizes him to stay in the United States an unprecedented three years. INS officials in the Los Angeles district office, who also became personally involved in the case, worked hastily to get word to the embassy in El Salvador, and within a matter of hours arranged for Walter to be on a plane to Los Angeles.

INS officials even waited at the airport with Israel Siguenza and drove the family to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana to visit Sonia.

The boy’s reunion with his mother was emotional. Walter, who had not seen his mother in almost two years, cried when he saw her connected to tubes and machines in the intensive care unit. Sonia Siguenza could not speak, but tears flowed down her face.