Irvine Valley Professor Faces Deportation

An acclaimed music professor at Irvine Valley College, who joined the faculty only last fall, has been ordered to leave the United States by Feb. 2 because of what he says was an honest misunderstanding of one of his immigration papers.

The college’s music department waited 10 years for the money to hire a full-time music professor like Daniel Luzko, a Paraguayan composer whose work has commanded awards and recognition in several countries.

Now students and faculty are scrambling to convince Immigration and Naturalization Service officials that Luzko is indispensable.

On Monday he will be required to appear before the INS to show officials that he has purchased a plane ticket back to Paraguay.

“We’re behind him 110%,” said music major Lisa Casull, a full-time pediatric nurse who has studied with Luzko since his arrival at Irvine Valley last fall. “If he needs us to speak at an immigration hearing, we’ll be there. If he needs us to write letters, we’ve done that. I don’t know what else there is for us to do. I left a message at the governor’s office on Wednesday.”

Luzko, 33, has been in the United States for 11 years. During that time, he earned a doctorate in music and taught at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Before moving to Aliso Viejo for the job at Irvine Valley College, Luzko served as the music librarian to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.

He applied for citizenship nearly two years ago, and has been waiting his turn for an interview with the severely backlogged INS ever since.

But when Luzko traveled to Paraguay in December to receive a $10,000 music prize from his native country’s government, it was with a permit he had used on a previous trip--a permit he believed was still valid.

Not so, immigration officials said when he returned to the U.S. through Miami.

“I will probably have to spend all of the prize money on legal fees,” Luzko said last week in his tiny award-strewn office at the college.

*

His lawyer, Jim Acoba, filed an application for humanitarian parole on his behalf at the INS offices in Los Angeles.

Acoba is confident that Luzko has a strong claim. “It’s one of the best cases I’ve ever had. I would probably predict that it will be granted.”

If it is granted, Luzko will not be deported. But he will be required to start his application for citizenship all over again.

“I was doing step by step what I thought I had to do to remain here,” Luzko said. “All that I did for two years is being tossed into the trash.”

The INS examiner who is handling Luzko’s case could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.

Luzko’s misunderstanding stemmed from a red stamp on the document he had used to travel to Spain to receive a previous award in 1998. It said, “Paroled . . . May 8, 2000.”

The stamp, it turns out, refers to his permission to remain in the U.S. until his scheduled INS interview, not his ability to travel.

“It was my mistake,” said Luzko, who had never used an immigration lawyer until this week. “. . . I looked up the word ‘parole’ before I went to Paraguay. But this paper expired Oct. 27, 1999.”

*

When he arrived at Irvine Valley, Luzko hit the ground running, said professor Steve Rochford, the college’s director of instrumental music, who has written a letter to the INS on Luzko’s behalf.

Luzko scheduled a series of concerts to help fund the new $35,000 Baldwin grand piano he helped the department purchase. He is composing a piece for the school’s wind symphony. There are waiting lists to get into his classes.

Students, faculty and college administrators have sent stacks of letters on his behalf.

Freshman music major Jason Deift, 21, is one of them. He describes the possibility of losing his teacher as “a nightmare.”

“He’s very passionate, a very inspirational teacher and a good friend to us all,” Deift said. A person of his caliber, of his skill level is an asset to this country. . . . He lives this program like it’s his life.”

College President Raghu Mathur has added his voice to the chorus. “This one technical error, certainly, can be rectified to preserve the quality of our college and the artistic community within which Dr. Luzko has already made a sizable impression,” Mathur wrote in a letter to the INS this week.

As for Luzko, he is weary but calm, caught in limbo somewhere between trying to do his job and figuring out how to sell his car and pack up his belongings in a hurry.

Luzko said the whole thing reminds him of the character in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”

“You wake up one day and you’re an insect. You are something else, and you have to restart your life with a new composition,” he said. “It was a mistake I made, I realize that. But I’m losing everything because of human error.”