Private Bills seek to right immigration 'wrongs'

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Some Immigration Bills Aim for Little Victories

Individual Remedies a Controversial Last Resort

By Karin Brulliard

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, July 30, 2007; Page A08

Congress has repeatedly snubbed plans that would hand out green cards to millions of illegal immigrants. But how about one for Genevieve Vang?

Vang's 17-year quest to gain political asylum through normal channels has been frustrated at every turn. But under Senate Bill 1648, permanent U.S. residency would be granted to Vang, her husband and two of their children -- Laotians living in Michigan -- and to them alone.

(photo)Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.) with Malik Jarno, a teen from Guinea on whose behalf private bills have been filed. The bills did not pass. (Courtesy Of International Friendship House)

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), is one of nearly 60 pending "private" bills that would grant permanent residency, or green cards, to specific immigrants battling deportation, including a Bangladeshi man facing a death sentence in his homeland, a Kenyan woman whose American husband died before he could make her a legal resident and a German teen who has spent half his life in Ohio.

"He's still in danger of being deported, and so we want to get him some kind of legal status," said Rep. Paul E. Gillmor (R-Ohio) of his bill on behalf of the German teen, Manuel Bartsch, who was brought to America by his step-grandfather and jailed two years ago after contacting immigration authorities for records he needed to take a college entrance exam.

For those whose requests have been denied by federal officials and rejected by immigration judges, Congress is the court of last resort. Touched by their stories and convinced of the need for occasional flexibility, lawmakers have introduced more than 500 private immigration bills since 1996.

The method has critics. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin calls it "instant amnesty." Some immigrant advocates call it special treatment for people with common problems. Those concerns have contributed to a low success rate. Since 1996, just 36 private immigration bills have passed.

Still, dozens of bills are introduced, sometimes several sessions in a row. Immigration authorities typically postpone deportation while a private bill awaits action.

Common beneficiaries are foreign children adopted by U.S. citizens after their 16th birthdays, making the adoption irrelevant for immigration purposes, and immigrants whose American spouses perished. Many have attracted media attention to the point that they are local celebrities.

"Some have been working for a number of years, and the family is getting ready to be broken up," said Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), who has sponsored a bill for the second year that would give legal residency to 34 Mexican, Polish, Tanzanian and Serbian immigrants, not all of whom Rush has met. "I was inspired by the harm that would take place in the families."

Private bills were once more popular -- and fruitful. Thousands were enacted during the first hundred Congresses. But today's heated immigration debate and other factors have led to a decline, experts say.

A 1965 law emphasized family reunification as a criterion for immigration, and that previously was the basis of many private claims. At the same time, scandal has been a deterrent to private bills. In the 1980 Abscam sting, FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks offered payments to members of Congress for private immigration bills, leading to the ouster of seven lawmakers. Two decades later, Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) faced censure for a private bill to aid the son of a state Republican Party leader.

Some members of Congress refuse to sponsor private bills because they fear "an onslaught of requests," said Christopher Nugent, a Washington immigration lawyer who represents Malik Jarno, a mentally retarded teenager from Guinea.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who sponsored two unsuccessful private bills to help Jarno in previous sessions, said he wanted to send "a very strong signal to immigration authorities" that Jarno had "not received just treatment." Jarno's case is now back in court.

No pending private immigration bills are sponsored by members of the Washington region's congressional delegation.

The most prolific sponsors are Democrats. Levin has eight pending; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has nine. Feinstein's cases include three her staffers say were botched by immigration lawyers and the case of Jacqueline W. Coats, a Kenyan whose American husband died saving two children from drowning in San Francisco Bay days before Coats's green card application was filed.

"In the immigration world, there are heartbreaking stories of people who face hardship through no fault of their own," Feinstein said in a statement. "Sometimes it is important to step back, be human and act with compassion."

Among the Republican sponsors is Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), who helped prepare this year's Senate immigration bill and later cast a vote that contributed to its defeat. Another is Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), an outspoken critic of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and champion of the Mexican border fence. Hunter, a presidential candidate, sponsored Fouad Yousef Hakim Mansour and Saheir Gamil Shaker Mansour, Coptic Christians who fled religious persecution in Egypt, overstayed visitor visas and lived illegally in the United States for 10 years before applying unsuccessfully for asylum. They recently won permanent residency in Canada.

Asked if the private bill would have granted the Mansours "amnesty," Hunter's spokesman, Joe Kasper, said Hunter decides private bills on a "case-by-case basis."

Hunter "couldn't knowingly turn his back on the Mansours," Kasper said. "This is one of those situations where the end result quite possibly could have been death."

Some observers say plenty of immigrants have similarly compelling reasons to stay but lack access to lawmakers. That disparity is one reason private bills should be axed, said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.

"Awarding special treatment often leaves the legal or administrative problem untouched," Turley said . " If a person was unable to get relief, then new avenues of relief should be created for all such persons."

Gillmor said private bills should be "very rare." To help people like Bartsch, Gillmor said, he has sponsored legislation that would provide green cards to some illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children.

Jason Peltz, the Vangs' attorney, said their case is without parallel.

Genevieve Vang, 42, and her husband fled Laos's communist government for France in the 1970s. After Guy Vang learned that his siblings were in the United States, the Vangs came to this country with their two daughters in 1990. They applied for asylum and were told for the next decade that their case was pending. When their file was unearthed, Peltz said, the Vangs were told that their application was rejected because they were already citizens of a "safe haven" -- France. Their appeals were denied.

Meanwhile, they opened a popular Dearborn, Mich., restaurant and had two more children. The delay forced them to put down roots, Peltz said. "When an immigrant messes up, the government can deport them," Peltz said. "When the government messes up, there's no remedy."

Vang said she is not sure whether other illegal immigrants should be helped. But she is sure about her family, which she said has no ties to France. "This is a mistake of paperwork, but it's not from my side," Vang said in a telephone interview. "They should know that and just fix it."

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.