Old Drug Conviction Severs Pastor’s Ancient American Roots

The Rev. Steven Mullenix, scion of an Ohio farming clan whose ancestors fought in the American Revolution, is having a tough time getting what he’s always wished for: U.S. citizenship.

Mullenix, 36, was born and reared in Canada, got hooked on drugs as a teenager and was caught with a bag of marijuana at age 18. He spent three months in a Canadian jail, but kicked his habit and had his drug conviction vacated in 1992.

In 1995, he moved his family to upstate New York on a religious-worker visa. Only then did he learn that a seemingly insurmountable wall separates him from what he considers his birthright: He must leave the United States next year.

“They’re saying that I can never live in the country that I’ve always considered my home,” he said, his upraised hands clenched into fists. “It’s my heritage, my history, my inheritance. It’s everything that I am.”

Under a U.S. immigration law crafted to exclude terrorists, murderers, torturers, Nazi war criminals and other undesirables from abroad, Mullenix is deemed “excludable” for life. Anyone arrested with more than 30 grams, or 1 ounce, of banned drugs is viewed as a potential dealer.

Only an extraordinary congressional waiver or a change in the immigration code can lead to citizenship. He’s suing to try to force a change in the law.

Mullenix can trace his American lineage to 1671. Forebears fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War II. His grandmother still owns a 70-acre farm in Arcanum, Ohio, where the family settled two centuries ago.

In 1953, Mullenix’s grandfather snapped up a low-priced agricultural nursery business and moved his wife and two teenage sons to Mitchell, Ontario. The sons grew up, married Canadians and eventually returned to the United States.

Mullenix’s father, Paul, never bothered to request citizenship for his three children--”he figured we were Americans”--and he had reared them as Yankees in Canada. The family hoisted Old Glory, made friends among U.S. expatriates and ate western Ohio fare: hominy grits, biscuits and gravy, sassafras tea.

For someone who has dreamed since childhood of returning to the land of his forefathers--virtually all his relatives live “south of the lakes”--the thought of exile makes Mullenix sick with grief.

“I walk through the cemetery in Arcanum and laying there is my flesh and blood,” he said. “That’s what makes this so horrible. . . .

“I want to live here because this is my home, and I want to make the same sacrifices as every other American, pay my taxes and vote, and support the government and be a good citizen.”

Mullenix, his Canadian wife, Loretta, and their two daughters, Hannah, 11, and Esther, 2, must leave when his five-year visa expires in December 2000. Only Esther, born in New York, is a U.S. citizen.

He can apply to return only after a one-year interval, virtually ensuring that he will lose his Pentecostal ministry at an Assemblies of God church in Newark, a village near Lake Ontario.

It makes no difference that, as Mullenix says, he never intended to sell drugs: His addiction was so voracious, he says, that he often consumed an ounce of marijuana a week.

Nor does it matter that Canada, after investigating his background over two years, erased his criminal record. His foreign pardon is not recognized in the United States.

Residence requirements were tightened in 1952, and Mullenix’s father could not transfer citizenship. So far, it seems the best Mullenix can hope for is a job-related non-immigrant visa, or to settle for returning periodically on vacation.

In his federal lawsuit, Mullenix argues that his citizenship claim was improperly denied because the immigration law fails to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” as promised in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Mullenix also suggests that the law’s section on those excluded should be amended to exempt children of a U.S. citizen “provided they have been rehabilitated for not less than 10 years.”

Another option is to seek a private bill in Congress through the House Immigration and Claims subcommittee. Mullenix is seeking help from Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), though he has been told that only three private bills for people convicted of possessing marijuana have been enacted since 1981.

In 1996, Congress made it much more difficult for people with criminal backgrounds to obtain permanent residency, the precursor to citizenship.

“It’s become a law of zero tolerance, one strike and you’re out, no compassion, no waivers, no second chances,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Advocacy groups consider the law onerous and want Congress to reconsider it.

Its application is having consequences “that most members of Congress certainly never intended,” said Carol Wolchok, director of the American Bar Assn.’s Center for Immigration Law and Representation.

Mullenix was born with spina bifida and walks with a limp. He had what he describes as a traumatic childhood, and by age 15 he had dropped out of school and was abusing drugs and liquor.

His conviction in 1981 “happened when I was still a baby, maturity-wise,” he said.

He hit bottom four years later, he said, when at age 22 he found himself living on welfare in a rundown motel, having lost his factory job and his friends.

He entered a rehabilitation center and turned his life around. He registered for college and become an ordained minister. Now he counsels prison inmates on how to step away from drugs.

Many in his congregation cannot fathom his predicament.

“You compare him to a lot of people we have let into this country, and he’s head and shoulders above many of them,” said Paul Richardson, 49, a building inspector. Asked if there’s hope for Mullenix’s cause, he replied: “Surely there is. Where there’s prayer, there’s hope.”