Widow’s Residency Case Still in Limbo

The autumn of 1996 was a bad time to have immigration problems.

Presidential candidates were suggesting that troops patrol the border. Congress was hashing out yet another anti-illegal immigration bill. And deportations by the Immigration and Naturalization Service were at a record rate.

Yet many who have heard the story of Jasmin Salehi’s looming deportation seemed to say the same thing: “That’s not right.”

More than a year after the native of South Korea learned that she was on the verge of being forced to leave the country because she had not been married to her U.S. husband long enough when he was slain by robbers, Salehi is still here.

Despite countless hours of work, and the support of everyone from prominent Washington politicians to the head of the INS, the Sherman Oaks woman’s case remains unresolved, hanging in a limbo that is part politics, part bureaucracy.

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The soft-spoken 33-year-old with the easy, if somewhat sad, smile remains optimistic, though. The American brand of justice she learned of while growing up in Seoul prevailed this summer when her husband’s killers were sentenced to life in prison, she says. And she believes it will prevail in her immigration case.

She knows, though, better than most, that in her adopted country real justice seldom comes with speed or ease. It takes letters to a congressman in Woodland Hills--and his successor. It takes an appearance at the Federal Building in Westwood and visits to senators in Washington. And it takes the tireless help of a local family who lost a son to violence and is struggling to help themselves by helping her.

“People keep asking me why not yet, why so complicated,” Salehi said recently. “I say I don’t know.

“I could go back, sure,” she continued, speaking over the din of a nearby construction job and a Yorkshire terrier named Happy.

“But I was married here. I made a life here. I want to stay here.”

It was a brief marriage, lasting 11 months before it was ended by a bullet. The INS requires that a marriage last at least two years to qualify a noncitizen spouse for permanent residency. But it was, according to all who have worked on her case, a real love match.

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Jasmin, whose given name is Mai Hoa Joo, met Cyrus Salehi in August 1993 in a downtown Denny’s restaurant. Cyrus was the manager, Jasmin a tourist, in town to visit her younger sister, who was attending a fashion design school.

The Iranian-born Cyrus had learned enough Korean during his two decades in Los Angeles to tell her, “You’re pretty.”

It was only a matter of time after that, of dinner dates and trips back and forth to Korea, of long phone calls and longer love letters, before the two were married in 1995. By that time, Cyrus was managing a Denny’s in Reseda, where he was also a part owner.

Early on a Saturday morning, Feb. 3, 1996, a 20-year-old gang member named Ruben Lopez walked into the restaurant while a buddy and two girls waited in a getaway car. Lopez demanded money. Cyrus Salehi opened the till and handed him the contents: $400.

Lopez shot him anyway.

A few months later, Jasmin Salehi met Ralph and Francine Myers, whose son Tom was shot to death after confronting gang members at a party in 1993. They offered to help guide her through government bureaucracies, and she went to the INS office in Los Angeles to discuss a conditional residency permit, which in time could become permanent.

It was then that Salehi was told that without a U.S. husband, she would have to leave the country.

“I understand the INS regulations, but I could not accept that they wouldn’t make an exception” because of the murder, said Ralph Myers, the owner of a Granada Hills moving company, whose tireless efforts to secure Salehi’s residency are something of a substitute for grief counseling after the loss of his son.

“I couldn’t buy that--not in America.”

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When The Times first reported Salehi’s plight in September 1996, the outcry--from California to Washington to Seoul--was such that Salehi and others believed a reprieve was imminent. But a solution has proved elusive despite the efforts of many.

“We’ve learned the system the hard way,” Myers said. “Jasmin could probably pass her citizenship test right now, at least the part on how the government works--or is supposed to work.”

The first letters went to Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), but the veteran lawmaker was retiring. Brad Sherman would win the seat, but not until November.

The next pleas went to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who quickly sought an exception from the Los Angeles INS office. Despite her clout, INS officials told Feinstein they were sorry, but they simply had no authority to make such an exception.

Feinstein introduced a private relief bill in the Senate, but the legislative session ended without the bill making it out of committee, which killed it.

Shellie Samuels, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the man who shot Cyrus Salehi and the getaway driver, wrote the INS saying Jasmin might be needed to testify during the trials.

So the INS extended her so-called parole status through Sept. 30.

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Working on his home computer, Ralph Myers designed newsletters and information packages of various editorials calling on the INS to find a way to let her stay.

In March, Feinstein reintroduced Salehi’s private relief bill. In April--between attending the trial of the man who shot her husband and his sentencing to life in prison without parole--Salehi went to Washington, D.C., with Ralph Myers and Myers’ daughter, Maria. They met with aides to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking them to support Salehi’s bill.

By early summer, the group had wooed Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat who had won Beilenson’s seat the previous November, and Sherman introduced a companion bill to Feinstein’s private legislation, taking up Salehi’s fight in the House.

There was more business to attend to before the summer was out, however--another murder trial. This time, it was 19-year-old Samuel Martinez, the driver of the getaway car, sitting in the Van Nuys courtroom. He also got life in prison without parole.

By the time the trial was over, Salehi’s case was once again looking promising. Even though her INS extension was running out, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner personally assured Feinstein that as long as any private legislation was pending, Salehi would not be deported.

Then on Nov. 6, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill on a unanimous vote. The following day, the full Senate did the same.

The only remaining hurdle was the House bill. But the first session of the 105th Congress wrapped up before Sherman’s bill could be taken up. The bill still could be heard soon after the Congress reconvenes in January. Sherman has helped Salehi secure another extension from the INS, through September 1998.

Jasmin Salehi doesn’t believe it should be easy to be allowed to stay. She just figures that maybe she’s paid her dues.

Ralph Myers figures things about the same way.

“This isn’t about politics,” he said. “This is about having compassion for someone who has suffered a terrific loss.”