USImmigrationDebate.com

FOUNTAIN VALLEY – Wade Grant knew it wouldn't be easy.

The 45-year-old Fountain Valley man figured there would be something of a delay in getting his Thai wife an immigrant visa.

Still – pretty certain that Kampong Pinongram and their U.S.-born son would join him in time for the holidays – he bought a Christmas tree and wrapped gifts for both of his loves. Three months later, Grant still waits while the presents under his Christmas tree collect dust.

Some might think Grant, a quick-witted U.S. citizen who served his country as a Marine and is now a disabled veteran, might have the odds stacked in his favor. Instead, the born-and-bred Orange County resident has been forced to navigate through an immigration bureaucracy governed by a law as complicated as the tax code. Exasperated with his ordeal, he's taken to the Internet to detail his experience.

He insists on bringing his 28-year-old wife to the U.S. legally by petitioning the government.

"I want to do it the right way," Grant said.

But what was supposed take a few months has become an ordeal of more than a year that's shaken his trust in the immigration system and tested his convictions. At one point, he was even tempted to bring his wife illegally.

Grant said he is only certain of one thing.

"The system is broken," he said. "And ... trying to get someone to listen to you when you know it's broken? It's disheartening. Most people don't know what you have to go through ... the hardship and suffering, I've had to go through to legally get my family here."

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Mariana Gitomer said the agency cannot comment on specific cases.

"All I can tell you is that we are aware of this case and are looking into it," she said in a written statement.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Grant met his wife in 2006 while he was working in electronics calibration in Chon Buri in Thailand. A first encounter turned to love and the couple became engaged a year later. Grant brought his wife to the U.S. on a fiancée visa and married her in August 2008 in Laguna Hills.

That's about the time the economy took a nose dive. Soon, Grant was laid off from three different jobs and moved across the country for work. At the same time he and Pinongram had a son, named T.J.

Grant's precarious financial situation made him ineligible to file for adjustment to her legal status because he wouldn't meet the income requirements.

Then Pinongram's mother in Thailand became very sick. That's when the couple reached a turning point.

Pinongram, who feared her mother would die before meeting her new grandson, knew leaving the United States would be risky because she hadn't yet received legal residency. Grant knew he'd have to petition for her to return legally from abroad again once she left, but said he couldn't deny his wife's desire for their son to meet his grandmother – possibly for the last time.

A VISA JOURNEY

About a year ago, Pinongram left for Thailand. That's when the nightmare started, Grant said.

As soon as he was able to find a steady job in June, he petitioned for his wife to get another visa. After a minor technicality, Grant received a text and email in late August from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, stating that his petition had been accepted and forwarded to the California Service Center for processing.

However, in September, T.J. got sick. A Thai doctor diagnosed him with bronchitis – a condition that likely stems from a bout with pneumonia when the boy was younger, Grant said.

T.J.'s health problems have since deteriorated. While Pinongram takes her son to a rural hospital, about 45 minutes from her village, Grant believes T.J. needs better medical care in the United States.

Grant said he considered bringing his son back to the U.S. to live with him. But that would present a host of new problems, he explained. Grant works full-time and can't afford child care, he said. This means he would have to work less or quit his job to take care of his child. The Catch-22 is that he would then become ineligible to petition for his wife because he'd fail to meet the income requirements to do so.

In addition, the boy doesn't speak English and is very much attached to his mother, having spent very little time with his father.

Instead, Grant asked U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services to expedite his wife's visa, which required travel to Thailand. There he gathered T.J.'s medical information – translating multiple documents from Thai to English at $25 a page – to complete the application for an expedited request.

Overwhelmed with petitions, USCIS officials told Grant that the agency had transferred his case from California to the Texas Service Center to expedite it. However, back-and-forth correspondence between Grant and various agents show inconsistencies. While one agent told him they'd received his case, other agents told him they hadn't.

Even though Wade had a reference number showing the agency had gotten the case, agents on the phone told him there was no record of it in their system, he said. At the same time, USCIS sent him a letter stating that his case had been approved.

While he attempted to clear the matter, Grant said he got nowhere with the agency.

"It was a mess," Grant said.

A veteran who became disabled when he was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease in the military, Grant's illness worsened with the stress.

 

As Martha Morales stood before the altar at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Tijuana her thoughts were focused on one thing – her children.

"Make sure that they have everything they need," she prayed. "Make sure that nothing happens to them because they are going to be all alone."

That was May 8, 2008.

A day earlier, Martha had been separated from her six children – then ages 1 to 23 – when she was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At 6 a.m., at the family's Orange County home, she was handcuffed and taken to the ICE facility in Santa Ana.

Her husband, Juan Manuel, a welder, was already at work, but he was also ordered to appear at the facility. By day's end, the couple – in the United States for 19 years – were deported to Tijuana. They left behind their six children, three undocumented and three U.S. citizens, on their own.

Increasingly, as more undocumented parents are deported, such separations are becoming common, leaving families with a painful decision – leave U.S. citizen children behind, or pull them out of the only country they've ever known.

In the past decade, the number of U.S. citizens born to undocumented immigrants more than doubled, to 4.5 million, according to data released last month by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

In the same period, immigration officials have cracked down on the undocumented, more than doubling the number of deportations. In 2010, ICE statistics show that 392,862 undocumented immigrants were deported.

Naturally, the trend has become fodder in the immigration debate. Some politicians want to repeal the right to citizenship granted in the 14th Amendment. Meanwhile, immigration activists and others are speaking out against such a move, calling it fundamentally un-American.

But behind closed doors, in the homes of families separated by legal deportations, the people paying the full price in this battle are children.

In January, I traveled with a news team from KCET's series "SOCAL Connected" to the border town of Tecate, Mexico. That's where Martha and Juan Manuel live, in a friend's home, with their youngest daughter, Aileen, now 4, a U.S. citizen. Their sons, Rodrigo, 16, and Rigoberto, 12, with the help of Rigoberto's godparents, drove down for a visit. The two-hour trip has become a ritual for the brothers, both U.S. citizens, on weekends and holidays.

The two-day visit felt more like two minutes, as the parents crammed in as much love as they could. Martha oohed and aahed over Rigoberto's artwork. She made the boys' favorite foods. She knew that, soon, her sons would be out of reach.

Martha crossed illegally into the United States in 1989. Juan Manuel had likewise entered the country illegally six months earlier. For the next 19 years, until the day they were deported, Juan Manuel worked steadily for the same boating company. Martha worked as a seamstress and, later, in a hotel laundry.