After the War, a Struggle for Citizenship

After refueling helicopters during the war in Iraq, Marine Lance Cpl. Alexander Zapata had hoped his wife and 10-month-old daughter might be there to greet him when he got back to the United States.

Instead, his family remained 1,500 miles away in the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia, unable to join Zapata in the country he helped defend.

Zapata, a so-called green card Marine, is not a U.S. citizen. When he signed up four years ago, Zapata thought he would be holding his citizenship papers by now, able to win permanent residency for his wife and child. But after years of waiting to become eligible, a paperwork snafu after he shipped out to the Middle East has delayed his citizenship request. Zapata was back at his base in South Carolina this week, trying get his citizenship application moving again.

Zapata, 23, has seen his wife just five times since he joined the service in 1999, and his last visit to Colombia was 10 months ago. Until he gains citizenship, he’s unable to bring them to the United States.

“It’s pretty hard, especially now that I have my daughter. I haven’t seen her growing up,” he said in a telephone interview as jets roared from the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort.

Contributions in the Iraq war by green card troops like Zapata have prompted a rush of federal legislation to streamline the citizenship process for foreign-born soldiers. Bills being completed in the House and Senate would reduce citizenship waiting periods and eliminate application fees. They would also extend citizenship eligibility to close relatives of noncitizens killed in combat.

Ten green card troops were killed by the time President Bush declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq on May 1.

Supporters of fast-track citizenship for green card troops say the least the nation can do for volunteers such as Zapata is reduce delays and frustrations of naturalization.

“This is a perfect example of why we put forward this legislation,” said Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte). “Hopefully this correction in the law will get rid of those kind of barriers.... Some people think this is a gift we’re giving them, but they in fact are giving us a gift. They volunteered. They signed up.”

Born in Barranquilla, Zapata moved to Miami when he was 15 to live with his mother, Aura Gamarra. At 46, she works three jobs, cleaning homes by day and offices by night.

Her son was first drawn to the Marines during his sophomore year at Killian High School in Miami. He recalled being infatuated by a friend’s stories about guarding a U.S. embassy during his time in the Marines.

Zapata enlisted in November 1998, while he was a senior in high school, but he delayed his entry for 10 months until after he graduated.

He met his future wife, Yeismy, while visiting family in Colombia during his senior year. The couple married a year later, 10 days before Zapata shipped out to boot camp.

From the beginning, family members say, Zapata’s goal was to become a U.S. citizen and bring his wife here. “It was so hard for them to be separated,” his mother said.

Under federal law, Zapata and other green card troops are required to wait three years before becoming eligible for citizenship.

The legislation in Congress would cut that period to as short a time as one year.

While he waited, Zapata said he called his wife every night, usually buying a $10 phone card that lasted about a week.

“It’s real hard with him there and me here,” Yeismy Zapata said in a phone interview from her apartment in Barranquilla.

Alexander Zapata said he sent his wife much of his paycheck. Money got so tight that he took a part-time job pumping gasoline at a station near the base.

The Zapatas said the separation began to wear on them. In 2000, while he was visiting his wife, the couple went to the U.S. Embassy in Colombia to see if Yeismy could get a visa. Zapata said he presented a letter from one of his commanding officers, which he had hoped would help sway officials.

“They told me if you’re not a U.S. citizen, we can’t help you,” he said.

It made no sense to his wife. “He’s good enough to fight for his country but not good enough to receive benefits to be with his family,” she said. “It’s not right.”

Last year, Zapata finally became eligible to apply for citizenship and began filling out his immigration paperwork.

Around the same period, Bush signed a temporary war-time order making armed forces personnel immediately eligible for citizenship.

But the action did Zapata little good because, by then, he had nearly completed the normal three-year waiting period for eligibility.

Staff Sgt. Alain Vargas, Zapata’s supervisor, recalled he and Zapata filling out their citizenship papers together last year and driving to the immigration office in Charleston to be fingerprinted. “There are a lot of things we have in common.... We know what it is to live in a Third World country and what it is to not have what we have here,” Vargas said.

Zapata said he waited for his payday so he could scrape together the $300 application fee, which for him was a sizable sum. The bills being considered in both the House and Senate would waive that fee for green card troops.

With talk of war in the Middle East heating up, Vargas recalled, Zapata volunteered to be one of the refuelers who would accompany the Marine unit to Kuwait. “There was no hesitation on his part,” Vargas said.

Shortly before his unit shipped out, Zapata said he mailed his completed application to federal immigration authorities, listing his mother’s home in Miami as the return address.

He also made his last visit to Colombia, spending 20 days with his wife and new daughter, Angelica, who was a month old.

In February, he shipped out, thinking that his citizenship application would be processed and that his wife and baby might be able to get expedited visas and join him when he returned.

In a phone call from Kuwait, he got the news from his mother. Immigration authorities said they had never received Zapata’s application, and his mother said she lost the receipt for the $300 money order her son sent with his application.

“I’d been trying for so long,” Zapata said. “I was hoping. But it didn’t happen.”

Gamarra appealed to Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), but she was told there was not much his office could do. Ana Carbonell, an aide who handles immigration issues for the congressman, said his office needed a copy of the money order to help Zapata. “We’d be able to reconstruct the file if we had proof of payment,” she said.

Carbonell said the best thing for Zapata to do is refile his application, a step he’s now taking and hopes to complete this week. Diaz-Balart’s office has agreed to assist in reviewing his paperwork and ensuring everything is in order, Zapata said.

Zapata said he had to put everything on hold during his four months in the Middle East, which included a resupply mission inside Iraq.

Those sorts of delays would also be addressed by the proposals in Congress, which would create new programs to allow soldiers to process and complete their citizenship while deployed overseas.

Zapata’s charter jetliner arrived back at his base the day after Memorial Day. Several hundred people waited on the tarmac. His mother was there, along with other family members. But Zapata said it was difficult not being able to see his wife and daughter.

He was eligible for leave but has decided to remain on duty so he can be discharged several months early, by mid-summer, and join his wife and daughter for an extended visit.

After that, he hopes to finally have his citizenship and get visas so the family can settle together in his home state of Florida. “That’s all he can talk about,” Vargas said.

It should be easier and faster for military volunteers to become citizens, Zapata said, but he’s not bitter about his own experience.

“It’s just way the system works.”