Illegal status keeping family in limbo (The Colombus Dispatch)

Illegal status keeping family in limbo
Couple hoping to stay with their disabled daughter

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 03:07 AM
By Rita Price
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The doctors said little as his wife labored, so it was only by chance that Jimmy Siglos had any inkling that the baby wasn't healthy.

"I'm not too good with computers," Siglos said, his eyes filling with tears at the memory. "But I saw on the monitor this word: Disabled. Disabled? The whole world went dark."

Reality soon caught up to his fear.

Jackylyn Siglos Gonzales was born with a devastating set of birth defects known as CHARGE syndrome. Each letter stands for one of the hallmark conditions of the genetic syndrome, and Jacky has them all: coloboma (a hole in one of the structures of the eye), heart defects, atresia (blockage of the nasal passage), retardation of growth and development, genital and urinary abnormalities, and ear abnormalities and deafness.

In the Philippines, Siglos and his wife, Rowena Gonzales, had been poor, "more than the poorest people you could ever see here," he said.

Still, he said, they had planned to take what money they had saved after working as performers during the AmeriFlora international floral exhibition in 1992 and return home after their child was born in early 1994.

Siglos is a musician, and Gonzales a dancer. Each had a visitor's visa and had come to Columbus separately. They fell in love amid a swirl of celebratory music and thousands of fragrant blooms.

Now, they had a desperately ill daughter - by birth a U.S. citizen - who struggled to breathe, faced a lifetime of expensive medical care and would forever rely on a feeding tube for nutrition.

"In my country, if you don't have money to go to the hospital, you don't go," Gonzales said.

Their visas had expired in 1993, before Jacky's birth, and they knew they were not likely to receive another extension.

Siglos said they chose to live on the wrong side of the law because they thought their daughter might die if they took her to the Philippines.

"They understood very quickly, after learning the scope of Jacky's medical conditions, that their returning would put her life at much greater risk," said their Columbus attorney, Ken Robinson.

Gonzales said someone offered one other option: leaving Jacky to adoptive or institutional care in the United States.

"That's my child," she said, sobbing. "I'd sooner kill myself."

* * *

President Barack Obama is scheduled to give a major speech today on immigration reform, a highly charged topic that is perhaps at its most complex when discussing what to do when the citizenship of parents and children don't match.

According to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, an estimated 4.5 million U.S.-born children have at least one unauthorized-immigrant parent.

Birthright citizenship for infants - and the notion that such status helps their undocumented parents gain a foothold in the United States - is an emerging immigration battle front.

At the same time, advocates and some lawmakers say, the nation badly needs to settle on a humane policy for longtime residents and hardship cases so that children don't suffer.

Siglos and Gonzales tried several times to address their immigration status, starting in 1995, Robinson said.

Three attorneys, a failed attempt to get support from a member of Congress and the loss of their documentation from the Philippines - an advocate misplaced their file, and it was never found - followed.

They finally were told that the only way forward was to turn themselves in and allow deportation proceedings to begin. A judge cannot cancel a deportation until the process has started.

"They were afraid, so they waited," Robinson said. "They kept hoping."

Siglos and his wife followed U.S. immigration policy and discussion for years, praying that a president would chart a way for families such as theirs to stay.

Jacky is 17 now. The shiny-haired girl progresses as much as possible with help from her family and the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities.

Mixed-status families often go about their lives unnoticed until an arrest or a crisis triggers action.

Siglos, 46, has been working and traveling in bands for years. Gonzales, 44, works in thrift stores while caring for Jacky and her younger sister, Jaimelyn, 8.

But their situation is no longer tenable. Jacky turns 18 next year, and she must have a court-appointed guardian because she will never be able to care for herself.

Her parents are not eligible as her legal guardians because of their immigration status, Robinson said. Without guardians, Jacky "would be a ward of the state," he said. "That was just unthinkable."

In January, Siglos and Gonzales surrendered to immigration authorities.

* * *

Their hearing in a Cleveland immigration court was scheduled for 2013, more than a year too late.

But their case is so compelling for humanitarian reasons, Robinson said, that one of his other clients volunteered to give up a court date on the always-packed docket so that Siglos and Gonzales could take the spot. The court agreed and set a hearing for this June.

Sara Faudree, Jacky's service coordinator at the board of developmental disabilities, explained the girl's needs in a letter this month to the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the nation's Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm.

Faudree wrote that she cannot imagine that Jacky would receive the same level of care and support in the Philippines. The child's in-home services and medical care are covered by Medicaid and cost tens of thousands of dollars each year.

Were she to live in a residential facility here instead of with her family, it would be far more expensive.

"They have worked so hard to make sure that Jacky and her sister are happy and well cared for," Faudree said.

Siglos and Gonzales are simultaneously hopeful and frightened about the coming immigration decision. They think of how fast Jacky's condition deteriorated a few years ago when they were unable to afford the special formula and feeding-tube equipment that keeps her nourished. She became so thin, Gonzales said.

"Back in our country, she could stay there a month, maybe a year," Siglos said. "Then? Maybe she's gone."

Jacky responds to her family. She smiles, laughs and loves to feel her mother's touch. In their Whitehall home, Siglos plays the guitar for her, and Jaimelyn sings.

"She likes music," Gonzales said. "And she wants you to tell her she's pretty."

Robinson thinks the couple has a good chance at obtaining permanent residency.

"That's what should happen," he said. "They're already planning that celebration."