Family takes steps to becoming Americans
By SUZAN CLARKE
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: July 4, 2005)
YONKERS — Teresita Mairena waited about five years to get her green card, but when she was finally approved, she had mixed feelings.
Her struggle to get legal residence status — which allows people to work and live in this country permanently — for herself and three of her five children was fraught with uncertainty, and the process was convoluted and complicated, she said.
She thought that having her hu*****and, Victor, an American citizen, petition for their stay would have expedited the process with immigration authorities.
"After 9/11, all those things got delayed," the 35-year-old Costa Rican native said. She and the children joined her hu*****and in 1999.
Adriana is now 17, Sheila is 16, Matthew is 13. Two daughters Natasha, 4, and Kimberly, 8 months, were born in this country.
Part of her overall disappointment is because Sheila was not granted a green card with the other Mairena applicants in December.
The family said it was told Sheila's application was not granted because of security questions regarding her petition. Her application is still pending.
"It was very depressing," Teresita Mairena said. "I was depressed. You understand, I wasn't expecting this."
Although he was not able to comment specifically on Sheila Mairena's case on Friday, Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, said heightened security concerns made it imperative that authorities thoroughly scrutinize every immigrant's application.
"It could be a 90-year-old woman in Des Moines that's applied for something; it could be a 16-year-old child in New York City," he said.
Security concerns were a "possible explanation for why one individual would get a benefit and another would not," Bentley said. "It's one of those things that, in the world that we're living in now, we have to pay attention to all of these issues and resolve them before we can grant a benefit."
As she sat recently with her hu*****and and children in the couple's Yonkers apartment, Teresita Mairena reflected on the anxieties of the past few years and her hopes for the future.
"I want to study and prepare myself," Mairena, a former cafeteria chef in Costa Rica, said as she attempted to control a wriggling baby in her lap. "I want to ... help myself here and help my hu*****and. Also, help my family that's outside the country."
In fact, the Mairenas were in the midst of final preparations for a trip to Costa Rica, although Sheila was unable to accompany them because of her immigration status. Adriana was staying as well, to keep her sister company.
"It's tremendous," Teresita Mairena said, when she talked of her plans. "I'm here packing my things and going to visit my family, whom I haven't seen in six years. I haven't been able to."
The intervening years were harder because she could not return home while her application was pending, she said.
"I have my mother, who got sick, and my family, and I can't leave here. It's hard, because you have your life made here, but you have a part in your country," she said.
Mairena and her children came to the United States on visitors' visas, but overstayed. Although they were no longer in the country legally, they were eligible for an adjustment to legal status if they had a petition from a family member.
The Mairenas' application process was unusually difficult, said Sister Roselle Santivasi of Cabrini Immigrant Services in Dobbs Ferry, a nonprofit organization that helps families file petitions for free.
The family was asked to do two personal green card interviews, she said. Most cases of this kind require just one, unless the authorities have concerns. Family members also were asked to present costly new medical evaluations, only to be told when they got to the second interview that they didn't need them, she said.
"I think somewhere along the line someone made a mistake on their case, because I just can't believe that after the first interview they would have had any problems with anything," Santivasi said.
Victor Mairena, a mortgage company loan officer who coaches chess in Yonkers public schools and local community organizations, has appealed to Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, for help with Sheila's petition. Her office has promised to investigate the matter.
Victor Mairena, 49, who came to the U.S. from Costa Rica in the late 1960s, said he was confident Sheila eventually would become a U.S. citizen.
"I'm not giving up," he said. "I always say, 'It's not over till the fat lady sings.' "
Adriana and Matthew became U.S. citizens last month. They qualified for naturalization quickly because their father was a citizen and they were minors.
Despite the disappointment, the Mairenas are generally upbeat because their circumstances have changed so much since the second nerve-racking interview.
"You don't know what they're going to ask you, what they're going to say, what they're going to question or not question," Teresita Mairena said.
She said she hoped the immigration process could be streamlined to spare others the uncertainty she had experienced, as well as the inordinately long wait.
An application like the Mairenas' should typically take two years, said Bentley, the immigration service spokesman. He acknowledged there were backlogs in the system, particularly in the New York area. He said the immigration service had embarked on an aggressive backlog reduction plan that would result in all immigration applications being processed within six months.
Despite her wait, Teresita Mairena she said "was happy, happy and very grateful, very grateful," when she, Adriana and Matthew received their green cards.
No one was happier than Victor Mairena.
"It's like," he said, "a dream come true."