Woman, adopted from Mexico as baby, turns out to not be U.S. citizen

[babylonsister]

A paperwork snafu? I can't even imagine.

An illusion of citizenship

Woman adopted as an infant from Mexico didn’t have paperwork done to get her citizenship. Now she’s facing deportation. And she's probably not alone in her situation.

By Mike Archibold | Tacoma News Tribune


Tara Ammons Cohen doesn't speak Spanish.

She hasn't lived in Mexico since she was 5 months old.

For nearly all her 37 years, she thought she was a U.S. citizen.

Turns out she was wrong, and now she faces deportation to her native country, where she knows no one, doesn't speak the language and fears for her life.

"I've been an American all my life," Cohen, a mother of three, said recently in an interview at the federal Northwest Detention Center on Tacoma's Tideflats. She has been there since July 2009.

Cohen faces two big problems in trying to stay in the United States.

Under federal law, she is not a U.S. citizen and never was because her American parents didn't take care of paperwork to make her a citizen when they adopted her as an infant.

And though Cohen is not a citizen, she is a felon – and that set up her deportation with no chance of returning to the United States.

more...

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/03/29/1127368/an-illusion-of-citizenship-woman.html#ixzz0jaVAVGCr

[MindandSoul]

1. Naturalization is soooo complicated!

My husband and I adopted a little girl from Korea when she was almost 6 years old. . . .We went through all the paper work to finalize the adoption, and she even got a new American birth certificate with my husband name on it as the father, and myself as the mother.

Still, when she turned 15, we had to go through the process of naturalization to make her OFFICIALLY a US citizen!

Now, wouldn't you think that, if you have an American birth certificate, you are already officially an American???
Nope!!!

[Xipe Totec]

2. Unspeakably cruel nt

[ClarkUSA]

3. Caveat: Her green card was denied due to her criminal background.

She foolishly didn't apply for her green card years ago when she first found out about the snafu so it could have easily been approved. Instead, she got in trouble with the law and scotched her chances for an easy fix.

The fault lies with her, not the government. Short of rewriting immigration law to make an exception for her alone, I don't see how her case can be resolved happily.

[Raineyb]

7. Yeah how foolish of her to think that she was a citizen because she was raised here.

She should have berated her parents to prove that she was a citizen so she could know to apply for a green card.

:eyes:

[ClarkUSA]

10. No, she was foolish not to have resolved the matter as soon as she found out about the snafu.

She herself said she was "bullheaded" about getting her green card after she found out about the problem in 2002. Because of her immaturity, she is now dealing with the immigration law that precludes giving criminals green cards or citizenship.

[Xithras]

27. Yeah, that is a bit of a stickler.

She and her siblings found out about it in 2002. Her brothers immediately had the paperwork done, became citizens, and recommended that she do so as well. By her own admission, she refused to do so because she was "bullheaded" and ignored the problem.

It was an incredibly dumb move on her part.

That said, she should be granted citizenship.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. She was born to alcoholic parents and was malnourished as a baby

and grew up to be an alcoholic. What a shock!!

This woman needs our sympathy and help with rehabilitation, not deportation.

[ClarkUSA]

13. What has that got to do with her case?

"In 2007, she pleaded guilty to theft and drug trafficking for stealing a purse that contained two bottles of prescription pills."

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/03/29/1127368/an-illusion-of-citizenship-woman.html#ixzz0jbFCNgKb

She was foolish not to have applied for a green card back in 2002, when she first found out about the legal citizenship snafu surrounding her adoption.

In the ensuing years, she was too "bullheaded" to bother with it, too. Only when she got in trouble with the law did she realize she made a stupid mistake.

I feel sympathy for her mainly because of her innocent kids, but it's not the government's fault here. SHE broke the law and is paying the price for her refusing to get a green card when she had a chance. Her husband should have known better, too. The INS has to follow the law. Unless the law is changed, their hands are tied.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. She is sick; alcoholism is a disease

I come from an alcoholic family. I feel sorry for her AND her kids. Deporting her is not in this family's best interest.

[ClarkUSA]

20. Unfortunately, she has been in trouble with the law repeatedly and often.

Her only chance is resting with the judge handling her appeal and hoping that she/he will find a legal reason why she should get a green card now despite the fact she knew she had to get one many years ago, taking in the mitigating factors such as her family.

[pnwmom]

26. The article only talks about one incident, not "repeatedly and often."

The charge involved stealing a purse from a friend's house that had prescription pills in it.

Her problem with alcoholism surely is related to the fact that both her birth parents were alcoholics. Fetal alcohol syndrome is also a real possibility.

According to the article, she only learned officially of her lack of citizenship after the criminal incident. Before that, a sister had told her something. Is it so difficult to imagine that she didn't want to believe her sister -- that she thought her sister must be wrong? That since she'd been legally adopted, and legally married years later, and legally and openly obtained government services in the past, that she must be a citizen?

[ClarkUSA]

30. "A year later Cohen got drunk and was arrested for assaulting her husband."

In the space of two years, she was arrested twice. The second time, she got kicked out of the drug rehab program.

<<According to the article, she only learned officially of her lack of citizenship after the criminal incident. Before that, a sister had told her something. Is it so difficult to imagine that she didn't want to believe her sister -- that she thought her sister must be wrong?>>

No, she believed it. In her own words, she "had to be stubborn, prideful, bull-headed" and refused to "walk around with a Green Card".

Cohen said she didn’t know she wasn’t a U.S. citizen until about seven years ago.

Because Cohen wasn’t a naturalized citizen, her sister told her, she needed a Green Card – a permanent resident visa and the first step to obtaining citizenship. Her brother, also adopted with Cohen, is in the military and serving in Iraq. He did become a citizen.

Cohen resisted. She said she’d married an American, as well as obtained a Social Security card, held jobs and received state benefits.

“I had to be stubborn, prideful, bull-headed,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why should I walk around with a Green Card?’”

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/03/29/1127368/an-illusion-of-citizenship-woman.html#ixzz0jbVb84bF

[pnwmom]

32. She castigates herself and you turn it against her. Nice.

Why did you leave this part of the article out? Was it because it conflicted with the statement that she had "known" seven years earlier?

"By the time Cohen found out in May 2008 that she wasn’t a citizen, she was in legal trouble on the drug charge. Even being married to an American didn’t help. Marriage does not automatically convey citizenship. That process can take three years."

[ClarkUSA]

34. I quoted her to make the point that she deliberately did not get a green card seven years ago...

The author of the article is not ever going to win a Pulitzer; your "gotcha" quote reveals that she "found out" - presumably via law enforcement - that she was not a citizen in May 2008. Prior to that, it is clear from my quote that she already knew that was the case five years earlier from conversations with her close relatives.

Her future now lies with the judge who will be handling her appeal.

[pnwmom]

35. No, it isn't clear. I don't believe everything I hear from friends or relatives.

Especially when something makes no sense. She knew she had been legally adopted. She knew the federal government had been treating her as a citizen for decades. She knew she was married to a citizen. I can believe that she "stubbornly" thought that her sister must be wrong.

[ClarkUSA]

36. After being told of the snafu, she refused to get a green card while her brother did.

No doubt her sister did, too. We know her brother became a citizen thereafter and presumably, so has her sister.

The fact that she didn't may be a matter of speculation for you, but by her own words, she was "bullheaded" about having to "walk around with a Green Card." After she committed a drug felony and got arrested a second time for assaulting her husband, she got caught. If you want to make a victim out of her, go ahead, but in reality, she made a really dumb decision that her siblings didn't, broke the law more than once, and now may get deported.

All I can say at this point is I feel sorry for her kids and hope the judge rules in her favor at her appeal for their sake but it doesn't look good, legally speaking. As a child of immigrants, I know how precious citizenship can be, so it is puzzling to me why she willfully refused to do the right thing at the right time. Now, it may be too late.

[provis99]

23. having a green card wouldn't have made any difference.

If you have a green card, and are convicted of a crime, your green card status is stripped from you and you are deported as an undesirable alien. The only way to definitely avoid deportation is to have American citizenship, and renounce other citizenships. An American with dual citizenship convicted of a crime in the US can be deported to their other citizenship country, and have their American citizenship revoked, even if they were born in the US and never lived anywhere else.

[ClarkUSA]

31. True, but if she had gotten her green card 7 years ago when she first found out about the snafu...

... she would have been able to become a citizen years ago.

[Nikki Stone1]

40. She stole a purse that contained two bottles of prescription drugs.

For that they gave her a felony: theft and drug trafficking.

Rush Limbaugh has done a lot worse when it comes to prescription drugs and no one is deporting him.

[Jennicut]

4. This is why we need immigration reform. If you were adopted or your parents brought you here

illegally and you speak no Spanish and have nothing in common with your birthplace, you should stay here.

[Zywiec]

24. Right, because everyone who comes here speaks English

and has everything in common with their birthplace.

:crazy:

[Nikki Stone1]

42. No, because these kids are culturally and linguistically American from childhood on

Dumping them in a foreign country where they can't get along--they don't know the system, have no family or friends--is just ridiculous.

[Jennicut]

43. I am talking about kids brought here as babies. They are Americanized

and their birthplaces are like strange countries to them. This has happened to tons of Mexican, Central American and South American kids who are now in their teens and twenties hoping no one finds that they are illegals. None of this was their fault.

[HereSince1628]

5. The sins of the parents visited on the children

Not to say that she didn't make mistakes, but this is misery compounded.
What sort of legal advice did she get?
Did a purse snatching turn in to a felony because the purse contained prescription drugs or is there more to this?

[Nikki Stone1]

6. We need to have a special law for those brought here as children and who have remained in US

There are a lot of kids like these, especially in LA, whose parents brought them here. These kids went through school here, worked here, and even gote married here, with no idea that they didn't have "papers." They are American citizens in every way that matters and some of them try to join the military, and then find out they can't because they are "not legal". There is nowhere for them to go if you deport them; there is no family that they know, no support system, and no money.

We need to have a law that says if you were a minor child when you were brought here, and you have been educated and lived your life here, you get automatic residency.

[pitohui]

12. no i can't agree w. giving "automatic residency" to a felon under any circumstance

one of my in laws is a phD who has broken no law and is (obv.) married to an american citizen, AFTER the marriage it still took her 10 years to get citizenship because her country of origin is a muslim one

i'm sorry, we DO need to change the immigration laws but we should change them so that high quality immigrants like soldiers who fight in our wars, phDs who do our research, and other quality immigrants have an easier time getting citizenship

lifelong alcoholics from a family history of alcoholism who have a criminal record, much as i'm sorry for the lady, she is no asset to america and needs to go to the back of the line

we have finite resources, and at some point, we can either be fair to most desirable prospective citizens or we can be fair to this bull-headed alcoholic asshat

[Nikki Stone1]

14. These children are NOT felons. They didn't commit the act in question, their parents did.

And even if children commit a felony, their record is sealed at 18, so it would not apply to these kids.

Because your ADULT in law had problems getting citizenship after making an ADULT decision to get married to a citizen of another country (and the in-law could have decided otherwise--adults have minds and choices after all) does NOT mean that a child who made no such decision and who couldn't make such a decision legally, should be deported 10, 15,20, 30 years after the fact.

You cannot equate adult decisions with children who are taken here without any say in the matter. Sorry that your family member made a decision that caused the family so much pain.

[anigbrowl]

19. The 1930s called, they want their eugenics movement back

:puke:

[Quantess]

29. Fine, then. Be that way. Look at your argument from Mexico's perspective:

Why would Mexico want her? Should Mexico be forced to take her?

[pnwmom]

33. Good point. Why should they feel an obligation to a person who was adopted out of

their country as an infant and lived in the U.S. for her entire life? It wasn't Mexico's fault that the citizenship wasn't completed.

[Nikki Stone1]

38. Well, Mexico has to follow up on its legal and technical obligations, but nonetheless.

these kids need to be provided for in America and as Americans. They were powerless when they were brought here, usually not knowing their legal status, and are culturally American (or Mexican-American, which in LA is a strong ethnic culture). To send them back to Mexico on a technicality doesn't serve anyone's good.

[Posteritatis]

22. I was on the receiving end of the Canadian equivalent to this situation

I was something of a surprise when I showed up, born very premature while my parents - both Canadian citizens, mind - were in the States on business. Usually that's a non-issue; as I was born to Canadian parents I'm automatically a Canadian citizen. The US and Canada both take that sort of situation for granted, and the governments usually spend like five minutes running through some paperwork to establish the infant's Canadianity despite the American birth certificate, and everyone's happy.

Turns out, though, that as with all paperwork, the forms and process are updated or altered now and then. I was born more or less precisely in one of the periods where that was going on, and so managed to fall through the cracks. The problem didn't catch up with us until I was sixteen (and had spent the last fifteen and a half years of my life up here).

In my situation the whole thing was painless enough - palms were applied to foreheads, a few calls were made, a few documents looked at, and I got my Canadian citizenship retroactively confirmed so everything's fine (in both countries). It was certainly rattling to say the least at the time, though.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. How stupid

[pitohui]

11. "fears for her life"? drama queen much?

felons are often sociopaths

maybe sometime in her 37 yrs of life she could have looked into getting her citizenship and/or NOT committing any felonies

in any case, i've been to mexico any number of times, no reason to "fear for your life" just because you can't speak spanish, that's just self dramatization and whining for pity points

[anigbrowl]

18. Ah, depends where in Mexico. Cuidad Juarez has the world's highest murder rate.

Mexico is considered dangerous enough by the State Department that they have issued a travel advisory.

And while it's her fault she got into trouble, it is not fair that she should have to go through the whole process of getting a green card and applying for citizenship because of a paperwork failure that took place when she was an infant.That situation should have been automatically rectified for free, not made into an obligation on her. Applying for a green card and citizenship is an expensive and time-consuming process. The immigration service should have been pro-active in taking care of this problem instead of throwing it back in her lap.

[Nikki Stone1]

39. Tijunana and other border towns are having a rash of drug killings; Jalisco is gang ridden

and dangerous.

There's lots of reasons to keep the kid here.

[babylonsister]

25. Your 'compassion' is noted. I certainly wouldn't want to be in her

shoes. Life as she knows it is about to change radically, not to mention she's been in jail for almost a year.

[Xithras]

28. Well, yes, she probably would fear for her life.

She's about to be shipped to a country with no money, where she has no family, no friends, no home, no job, and doesn't speak the language. In that situation, survival itself becomes a questionable thing.

[backscatter712]

41. Ah, here's DU's resident nativist asshole.

You'd probably be more among your ilk at Free Republic...

[LibertyLover]

15. I am so thankful to Bill Clinton

because with the changes to the laws under his presidency, when my husband and I brought our little girl home from China 6 years ago, the minute she entered the country she was a citizen. I did have to apply for her certificate of citizenship, which I got several months after we came home. Had we brought her back to the US after January 1 (or maybe the 11th, I can't remember), 2004 I wouldn't even have had to apply for the certificate - it would have automatically been sent.

[tammywammy]

17. This doesn't make sense

"Cohen said she didn’t know she wasn’t a U.S. citizen until about seven years ago.

Because Cohen wasn’t a naturalized citizen, her sister told her, she needed a Green Card – a permanent resident visa and the first step to obtaining citizenship. Her brother, also adopted with Cohen, is in the military and serving in Iraq. He did become a citizen.

Cohen resisted. She said she’d married an American, as well as obtained a Social Security card, held jobs and received state benefits.

“I had to be stubborn, prideful, bull-headed,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why should I walk around with a Green Card?’”

By the time Cohen found out in May 2008 that she wasn’t a citizen, she was in legal trouble on the drug charge. Even being married to an American didn’t help. Marriage does not automatically convey citizenship. That process can take three years."


So which was it, she found out seven years ago (2003) or May 2008?

[struggle4progress]

21. This isn't an uncommon problem, and it doesn't only affect felons:

it's possible, for example, to live years under the illusion that one is a US citizen and to discover otherwise only when one has a debilitating accident or illness that would normally produce disability payments -- but doesn't, because one turns out to have been brought into the US as a young infant and doesn't have citizenship. The result can be (for example) homelessness, not only for the directly affected person but also for their minor children

[Nikki Stone1]

44. There was a guy on KFI radio yesterday with the same situation.

Some weirdo host was talking about the amnesty bill and a young man called. He had been in US since the age of six and had gone to LAUSD schools his whole life. He got a job, got married, and then wanted to join the military. It was from the military that he learned of his "illegal" status. Now he is in legal hell, trying to stay here with his wife and kid, and the government wants him to return to Mexico and apply for residency status from there. It's a waste, because this kid WANTS to be a soldier and we could certain use the help.

[ecstatic]

37. A nice, single, handsome man on DU should marry her

I'm sure that would help.

[NeedleCast]

45. Appears this is largely her fault

She's known for seven years she wasn't a citizen.

"“I had to be stubborn, prideful, bull-headed,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why should I walk around with a Green Card?’”

Also, if she has an 18 year old child, that child should be able to apply for asylum for the mother.

[Fire1]

46. That just sucks. Big time. n/t