Local Woman One Step Closer To Citizenship (WPEC-FL)

Local Woman One Step Closer To Citizenship
Loretta Para has lived in the US for more than 20 years.

John Bachman
March 2, 2009 - 10:26 PM

Just a week ago, she thought she was being kicked out of the country... But tonight, a local woman is one step closer to getting her citizenship. Loretta Parra still has to convince a judge that she deserves to stay here in this country. But tonight, knowing that she's going to get her day in court makes her feel very confident that she will soon become a US citizen.

Surrounded by loved ones, Lorretta Parra looks back on her american life.

"I graduated middle school, high school and even community college," Loretta Parra told CBS 12.

For the last 20 plus years she's celebrated birthdays, thanksgiving, Christmas and much more. She moved to Florida from Chile with her family when she was ten...but several years later, her parents moved back to Chile. She stayed to marry her husband David in 1997. She has a son and even volunteers teaching mentally challenged kids. But Monday she faced deportation after an immigration clerk denied her most recent appeal to gain U-S citizenship.

"I saw it as a death. I felt like someone died. I felt the opportunity that I thought I was going to have was ripped away from me and from my family," said Parra

"You can't break my family up. You can't take that away from me. How are you going to do that. I was born and raised here in America," said Loretta's husband, David Pousa.

And when all hope seemed to be lost, Loretta got the phone call she's been waiting for.

With the help of her family, and her lawyer, Loretta now has something she has desperately wanted, a chance to show a Judge why she should become a US citizen.

And now she's confident that she will be able to convince immigration officials that she deserves to stay.

"Someone was listening and someone is looking out and I want to thank everyone and everyone who helped," said Parra.

Loretta and her husband don't have the same last name. She couldn't change it, because she wasn't a us citizen. They told me tonight that she can't wait to take her husbands name when she gets her citizenship.