Compassion, Please

Sarah Marie Caro, the 19-year-old daughter of American citizens, provides a classic case of the tangle of U.S. immigration policy. She’s entitled to apply for permanent resident status in the United States, but there is a grim caveat. She would have to leave her family, her job, her school and her adopted country for up to 10 years and only then could return as a permanent U.S. resident. Why? Because of an honest mistake made 15 years ago.

Caro was born in Mexico and adopted when she was 4. The adoptive parents assumed, wrongly, that her immigration status would be taken care of during the process of adoption. Now the teenager faces an agonizing predicament, along with thousands of others in America without papers but whose family ties or work skills make them eligible for permanent visas.

Two years ago, they all would have been able to simply file an application and pay a $1,000 fine. That’s no longer the case. A provision in the Immigration and Naturalization Code, Section 245(i), that allowed illegal immigrants eligible for green cards to adjust their status lapsed in 1998. Congress chose not to renew the program at a time when anti-immigrant feeling was running high, and America’s doors closed to this group.

This week, as the congressional session nears an end, lawmakers are considering a proposal from the Clinton administration that would provide a way out for Caro and others in similar situations. The White House plan calls for the restoration of the lapsed Section 245(i), thus adjusting the immigration status of those caught in this bureaucratic tangle. They would pay a less severe price, the $1,000 fine instead of expulsion.

If Congress does not restore Section 245(i), children, spouses, siblings and parents of citizens and legal residents eligible for residency because of their family ties will face a painful choice: to suspend their lives in the United States or to try to stay illegally. Congress should restore this section. It’s sensible and fair.