"As Law is renegotiated, Immigrant families are on edge"

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As Law Is Renegotiated, Immigrant Families Are on Edge

Doug Mills/The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/24fam...l?th&emc=th

(photo: Amir Nikpouri, a legal immigrant from Iran, has tried since 2005 to gain entry to the United States for his wife.)

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By JULIA PRESTON

Published: May 24, 2007

Jessica Brandi Lifland for The New York Times

(Photo: Hans Buwalda, a Dutch software engineer in California, has delayed marriage because of current immigration law.)

"Amir Nikpouri was struck by love at a family gathering on the first trip he had made in many years to his home country, Iran." “I never thought I could have so much in common with someone, especially with me living here and her in Tehran,” said Mr. Nikpouri, who is 30 and a longtime legal immigrant in the United States.

Five months after they met, the couple were married, in August 2005 in Tehran. Then Mr. Nikpouri came home to Chicago and read the immigration law that determines when he will be able to bring his new wife from Iran to live with him. He discovered that they would have to wait at least four years, and in the meantime she could not come to the United States even once to visit.

Mr. Nikpouri is one of an estimated 1.5 million legal immigrants in the United States who have been waiting as long as seven years to bring husbands, wives and small children to live with them. Instead of giving them new hope, a bipartisan compromise bill now under debate on the Senate floor would only make their plight worse, senators, lawyers and immigrants said yesterday.

While the bill’s supporters say it would put legal immigrants ahead of illegal ones, immigrant advocacy groups and lawyers who have studied the measure say it is a minefield for those who have been waiting for years in the bureaucratic labyrinths of the immigration system. If the bill passes, they said, millions of foreigners already in the legal pipeline could face even longer waits than they do now.

For future immigrants, priorities would shift to favor those with specialized job skills, higher education levels and English language ability over the family ties that have been the foundation of the system for four decades, making it even more difficult for relatives to immigrate.

Supporters of the bill, including the White House, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, and Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican, say it would help aspiring legal immigrants by eliminating the backlog of about four million visa applications within eight years. A total of 440,000 green cards — as visas for legal permanent residents are known — will be set aside during each of the eight years to reduce the backlog. But by a quirk of the bill, legal immigrants who are seeking to bring spouses would be left out of the backlog reduction and the number of visas allotted to them would be slightly reduced.

“This bill is a disaster for nuclear families, especially if they have obeyed the law,” said Paul Donnelly, an adviser to American Families United, an advocacy group for legal immigrants. “If you talk about family unification and you don’t talk about nuclear families, what do you mean?”

Currently, there is no limit on the number of green cards for foreign spouses and children of American citizens. When foreigners are granted green cards, they too are entitled to bring their spouses and minor children to live in the United States.

But legal immigrants who marry foreigners living abroad after they have become permanent American residents have to get in line to bring them in, and the line is at least four years long.

Mr. Nikpouri moved with his Iranian parents to the United States when he was 13. His parents have become naturalized American citizens and run a family automobile auction business in Chicago. Because of problems in his legal paperwork, Mr. Nikpouri did not receive his green card until 2004.

Under current law, if he applies for a green card for his wife, she cannot come to the United States until it is granted — in 2011, if he is lucky. His other option is to wait until 2009 to apply for American citizenship. Mr. Nikpouri asked — because his wife remains in Iran — that her name not be published.

“I work like a citizen, I pay taxes, but I cannot bring my wife,” Mr. Nikpouri said. “We want to live together. It’s the most basic human possibility.”

Romance found Hans Buwalda, a software engineer who is a legal permanent resident from the Netherlands, when he met a woman from Singapore over the Internet in April 2006. Mr. Buwalda said he pioneered sophisticated software tests at home and brought them to California, where he now lives, to build a business.

Mr. Buwalda says he hopes to remain in this country, but cannot marry his girlfriend if he wants to see her. Marriage to him would preclude her from even visiting the United States until her green card is granted. “Someone like me who is very law abiding, there is no way I can marry, unless I want to postpone my honeymoon for five years,” he said.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, both Democrats, and Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican, introduced an amendment to the bill yesterday that would eliminate the numerical limits on green cards for spouses and young children of legal immigrants.

More broadly, people who have battled the overburdened and often arbitrary immigration system were skeptical of the bill because of the immense new workload it would bring.

Among them are Curtis and Glenys Old, who have been fighting a deportation order for her son, Michael Head, a British citizen. Mrs. Old, who was born in Britain, had an Internet romance with Mr. Old, an American, that led to their marriage in July 2002. During their engagement, Mrs. Old brought Mr. Head, who was 19, and her daughter Sarah, then 13, on temporary legal visas to live with her. The family settled in Wardensville, W.Va., and Mrs. Old and her daughter became American citizens.

After Michael applied to become a permanent resident, months dragged by while the immigration service processed his petition. By the time he was called in for an interview, he had turned 21. Immigration officers told him he was no longer eligible for a child visa and ordered him to leave the country.

“Just because it took them so long to process a piece of paper is why we are being torn apart,” said Mr. Old, a computer system administrator. Mrs. Old said she had sold her home in England and that her son had no family to return to there.

Under the Senate bill, all adult children like Michael, who is now 24, would not be eligible to join their parents, even if the parents were American citizens. “To me, Michael will always be my child, my son, no matter how many years you put on him,” Mrs. Old said.

Past Coverage

* With an Immigration Compromise Committed to Paper, the Time for Scrutiny Begins (May 22, 2007)

* Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal (May 20, 2007)

* Times Select Content Taking the War Out of a Child Soldier (May 13, 2007)

* Times Select Content Students Search for the Words To Go With Their Cultural Pride (May 7, 2007)