INS Rules Pose Catch-22 for Adoptee

Sarah Marie Caro’s scrapbook sketches a kind of idealized Southern California childhood. There she is, from bewildered infant to exuberant cheerleader, from her first communion to her quinceanera, or 15th birthday celebration.

The fact that she was adopted at age 4 out of Mexico never mattered much. English was the primary language in a home where five older siblings accepted the adopted girl as their baby sister.

“I’m a lot like my mom,” she said as mother and daughter gazed at the images of a young lifetime.

She is an animated, upbeat 19-year-old who is studying at community college to be a teacher and works as a salesclerk at the giant Galleria at Tyler Mall, two blocks from the family’s ranch-style home on the outskirts of Riverside.

But the comforting prospect of a life of stability and continuity was shattered last year when an application for a U.S. passport revealed a startling fact: Sarah is an illegal immigrant.

Now she finds herself caught in a Catch-22 created by recent federal immigration crackdowns. As a child of U.S. citizens, she is entitled to permanent resident status, or a green card. That would be the first step in a swift transition to citizenship.

Until 1998, that would have been relatively simple: Submit the completed paperwork to an Immigration and Naturalization Service office and pay the $1,000 fine imposed on those here illegally.

But a series of changes in the law--approved as part of a congressional backlash against illegal immigrants--puts Sarah Caro and thousands of others in an almost impossible position. She is now required to appear at a U.S. Consulate in Mexico.

However, a 1996 statute said illegal immigrants could be barred from returning home for as long as 10 years if they leave the country. The INS may waive the ban in cases of “extreme hardship,” but there is no guarantee.

“My heart dropped to my feet when I found out,” said Amelia Caro, Sarah’s adoptive mother, a U.S. citizen born in Arizona. She is a second cousin of Cesar Chavez, the legendary farm worker advocate.

It turned out that Sarah’s parents had made a crucial mistake at the time of the adoption. They were unaware that they had to apply for Sarah’s citizenship. That is what is done by the great majority of people who bring children from abroad. Instead, the family wrongly assumed that Sarah automatically became a citizen when the adoption was completed in a California courtroom.

“It makes me feel like an outcast,” Sarah said. “I always hated those words, ‘illegal alien.’ I never thought it could happen to me.”

Seeking Help in Congress

This week, as the congressional session in Washington nears an end, lawmakers are weighing a Clinton administration proposal that would ease the way for Sarah and multitudes of other immigrants in similar situations. Likely beneficiaries number in the tens of thousands each year, and probably more than 100,000, according to the INS.

Those affected are typically the children, spouses and parents of citizens and legal residents, all eligible for U.S. residence because of family ties. Keeping families together has long been a cornerstone of immigration law.

“I thought, once we were married, my husband could get his papers and that would be that,” said Maria Estrada, 25. She is a U.S.-born citizen and lives in a Cypress Park apartment with her husband, Jose Antonio Estrada, 32, and the couple’s 2-month-old son, Ethan.

The couple met while working at a McDonald’s at the Galleria mall in Glendale and were married in January. But Jose Antonio remains illegal. He is unwilling to risk a trip to Mexico to complete the immigration paperwork, knowing he could face being separated from his family for 10 years.

The ranks of those affected also include many whose job skills make them eligible for permanent legal residency.

They are people like Pavel V. Rozvadovsky, a former champion skydiver for the Soviet military who fled here from Ukraine in 1991. A skydiving firm in California is sponsoring Rozvadovsky for a business visa as a professional of exceptional skills.

But he will not take the chance of leaving the country and being separated for a decade from his family--his wife, Janna, who also fled in 1991, and his two children, including his U.S.-born daughter, Natalie Victoria, who turns 2 next month.

“I feel trapped, frustrated,” said Rozvadovsky, 37, a resident of Riverside County who is a former skydiving world record-holder.

The INS said 10-year bans on reentering the United States have been imposed on illegal immigrants seeking legal status, but could not say how many.

The administration’s plan--part of a broad package labeled by its backers as the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act--would restore something called Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The provision, which lapsed in 1998 because of Republican opposition, allowed illegal immigrants eligible for green cards to “adjust status” in the United States upon paying the $1,000 fine.

If that provision were in effect, Sarah and others facing similar dilemmas could simply file their paperwork at INS offices here, pay the fine and go on with their lives. Defenders of the fine policy say it makes no sense to split up families whose members are legally entitled to official status.

“Without 245(i) you have in essence established a permanent underground population that is unable to ever adjust their status, because no one is ever going to stay away from their family for 10 years,” said Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the INS in Washington.

Because of Republican opposition, however, the fate of the plan is uncertain. Some GOP lawmakers have long derided the measure as a kind of green card giveaway program: Pay a fine and get your legal residency.

“This rewards people who come to this country illegally,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), a longtime critic. “This makes fools out of all the people who stood in line in their countries, waiting to legally emigrate to the United States.”

Nonetheless, the plan has considerable support within the federal bureaucracy. INS officials like the prospective financial windfall of more than $100 million that would probably flow in each year from the fines. At the State Department, the measure would ease the paperwork burden on short-staffed consular offices abroad.

But it is in households like that of the Caro family that the effect of this fine-print section of the massive immigration act is most profound.

“This is America. Why would anyone want to separate a family?” asked Amelia Caro, a retired Riverside County supervisory clerk who met her husband, Exiquio, when he appeared with his mariachi band during a Cinco de Mayo celebration in 1973. “They can’t keep her away from us for 10 years. That would kill me. She doesn’t even know how people live down there anymore.”

Amelia Caro first saw Sarah in 1981 when she and her husband went to visit her in-laws in Ensenada, Mexico. Sarah is the birth daughter of Exiquio’s brother.

At the time, the girl was about 6 months old, propped up with pillows. The year before, Amelia Caro had experienced a miscarriage and almost died. Amelia already had five children from earlier marriages, but this thin little girl won her heart.

“I just fell in love with Sarah when I first saw her,” said Amelia Caro. “She looked really cute, with green eyes and blond hair. And no one was paying attention to her.”

Sarah was the fourth child in a family that would grow to more than a dozen. The birth parents had little, and favored the adoption.

Still, the adoption took time, as Sarah and her family moved back to the Mexican interior for several years. Then, one day in December 1984, the girl’s uncle Elijio showed up at the family’s home in Riverside.

“I have a Christmas present for you,” he said.

Inside his car was the 4-year-old Sarah, on the first day of her new life.

“I gave her a bath and the water turned the color of chocolate,” Amelia Caro said, recalling how soiled, scraggly and malnourished the girl appeared. “She was the size of a 2-year-old. The doctor told me: ‘Don’t give her any tortillas and chili and beans. Give her vegetables and meat.’ ”

The adoption was completed in 1986 before a California judge.

The parents could have easily filed papers to begin Sarah’s path toward citizenship. But nobody advised them to do so.

Applying for a Passport

Sarah’s life took on the trajectory of so many Mexican American youngsters in Southern California. She learned English, was an honor-roll student at public schools, and joined the La Sierra High School Screaming Eagles Marching Band.

Late last year, the family decided to take a trip to Mexico to visit relatives. All applied for U.S. passports.

The passports of Amelia and Exiquio Caro arrived. But there was also a letter from the State Department delivering shocking news. Sarah was not a citizen.

The disclosure plunged the family into turmoil. Amelia Caro hired a lawyer and began visiting INS offices. At one she was told she could be fined $10,000 for each year her family had harbored Sarah.

The family filed an application to allow Sarah to live in this country legally. Last June, the INS notified the family that their petition was approved--the kind of news that normally is greeted with joy, but in this case was met with deep misgivings.

Under current law, the next step is fraught with risk. Sarah will probably be summoned for an interview at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. If she goes, she faces the possible 10-year banishment. The family lawyer, Gloria Curiel of Santa Monica, has advised Sarah not to leave the country.

Meantime, Sarah and her family go on with their lives, daily dreading the arrival of a letter from U.S. authorities that could bring matters to a head.

There has been a marked change in Sarah’s once-orderly life, a sense of uncertainty. As an illegal immigrant, she fears applying for a driver’s license and financial aid for her education. And she regrets not being able to vote this November. The hurt goes deeper, though.

“I thought I was in the same spot as everyone else,” Sarah said as she sat at the family’s dining room table with her mother, the scrapbooks arrayed on the table. “Now, I feel a little bit betrayed by my country.”

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CONGRESS IN NO RUSH

Lawmakers are moving slowly, calmly to adjournment. A15