Take a Number and Wait
Shaw, David
Take a Number and Wait Eva decided to take the INS up on its amnesty offer. Next came the bungling lawyer, the trip to Tijuana, and nearly two years of worrying about deportation. by David...
...The next morning we went to the doctor's office, where, after only a slight delay and modest confusion, we got the medical results...
...Every time, the answer was essentially the same: "We haven't heard anything...
...Not only that, Snagsby said, but he would charge me "only" $200 an hour instead of his regular flat fee of $1,500 to $2,000, because Eva's case was going to be so easy...
...The Tijuana doctor Snagsby said Eva had to get reports from the police in Mexico saying she had no criminal record...
...citizen...
...He said he'd told Eva about it months ago...
...The man who interviewed Eva was polite and respectful, as Snagsby had promised, and he was thrilled to see in his file that I worked for the Los Angeles Times...
...It came November 4—just under six weeks...
...Snagsby made an appointment for Eva at the consulate's office, and Eva wrote to a sister in Mexico, asking her to obtain and forward the police report...
...I reminded Snagsby that he had told us Eva would "probably be a permanent resident of the United States before the summer is over...
...All that matters is that he was born in this country and that Eva is his mother, not that she was married, right...
...Had Eva forgotten...
...Everything went fine," he said...
...Snagsby was calm and precise and reassuring...
...She could come and go across the border—or anywhere else—without fear of deportation...
...Snagsby's promise That night, I'd booked Eva and Ricardo and myself into a hotel in Rosarito Beach, 20 miles south of Tijuana...
...they were thinking 'Tijuana' but wrote 'Seoul' because they had another file for Seoul at the same time...
...Why didn't someone tell us about the notary before...
...That's why I asked you to send copies of everything to me...
...appointment at the consulate...
...Snagsby wrote back, saying I was "quite right" about the money...
...Within an hour, Eva had her temporary, six-month passport...
...He asked me to bring the INS letter to his office the next day and promised to set things straight personally...
...I signed my name—in ink, with a flourish—across the top of the Scotch-taped picture...
...That was my second mistake...
...But what was the notary supposed to notarize—that the picture was Eva, that the woman in the picture was my housekeeper...
...Or had she, ever fearful, repressed it...
...That was my first mistake...
...I called the Mexican passport office and asked for Senor Ramirez, the man Eva said had refused to accept my letter...
...The letter was supposed to be written in Spanish, she said...
...she was afraid she would never be allowed to return...
...Eva, a native of Mexico, had been my live-in housekeeper in Los Angeles for 12 years...
...Very cooperative...
...I told him...
...citizenship under the amnesty program...
...She started crying again...
...And why do they want a letter on my company stationery...
...Pummel them "Eva says she never got your letter," I told him...
...he asked...
...It was the first I'd heard of this requirement...
...You should have gone the straight amnesty route...
...Yes, the photo was supposed to be "canceled" or "sealed...
...That very day, Snagsby sent a telegram to the U.S...
...I wrote the letter and had it notarized and attached Eva's picture to it, and she went back to the Mexican passport authorities...
...You know the bureaucracy...
...Why didn't you call me when you hadn't heard from her in two months...
...I didn't ask...
...But it took so long to get the report—even though Eva had no record whatever—that Snagsby had to cancel the original appointment with the consulate and schedule another one...
...Moreover, as our lawyer told us, our documentation of Eva's residence was as extenDavid Shaw is the media critic for the Los Angeles Times...
...They'll have the results by the end of the day, and the next day, you'll take them and your documentation to the consulate at 9 o'clock in the morning...
...Five or six weeks," said Snagsby...
...Consulate in Tijuana for further processing...
...If there were any delays, Eva might not make her 9 a.m...
...citizenship...
...I learned everything I needed to know to pass the Foreign Service exam from stories in the left-hand column of the [front page] of the Times," he said...
...Right...
...Two weeks before her appointment, Snagsby met with me, Eva, and Ricardo in his office...
...She also had to have a physical examination—actually, just a blood test and an X-ray—by a doctor in Tijuana...
...Two or three weeks," said the consulate...
...I just paid it...
...After all, I'd decided to go to a lawyer, rather than try to process the amnesty application myself, because I didn't want to have to worry about all the bureaucratic obstacles that would have to be hurdled even in a case as straightforward as Eva's...
...it would have been faster and cheaper...
...Eva was too close now...
...Why did he file this...
...Three months," said one immigration officer...
...As for his failure to mention the mother-of-anAmerican-citizen option—well, ". . .quite frankly, I totally forgot that option...
...I don't know if it got lost in the mail or if she misplaced it or just didn't understand it, or if she just `forgot' about your letter because this whole thing scares her so much...
...That afternoon, Ricardo called me, as I'd asked him to do...
...Instead, I wrote back, enclosing the requested first payment of $500 and asking what would happen next...
...I asked...
...You could have done all this yourself," he said as he thumbed through Eva's file...
...Then he sent me a bill for another $500 plus costs...
...I asked...
...He was very polite...
...Finally, in mid-November, Snagsby sent me a copy of a form he'd received from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, saying Eva's initial application had been approved...
...A few days later, Snagsby sent us a two-page letter, spelling out in detail the various steps he would take in Eva's behalf—but failing, somehow, to mention the mother-of-an-American-citizen option...
...The day before Eva was supposed to go to Tijuana for her rescheduled appointments with the doctor and the consulate, she suddenly told me she was supposed to get a Mexican passport before leaving...
...sive as it was irrefutable...
...Gustafson sounded very solicitous...
...The whole process took almost three hours, but the consulate staff couldn't have been more friendly or helpful...
...After all, several friends who were also illegal aliens had applied for amnesty and they already had their green cards—proof of legal, permanent residency, incontrovertible protection against la migra, the immigration authorities...
...That meant I'd paid him $1,000 (plus about $140 in miscellaneous "costs"), and Eva still didn't have her green card...
...I didn't...
...Eva remembered no such notification...
...That meant he'd billed me a total of $1,240 (plus costs) so far...
...In fact," I said, really steaming now, "why the hell are you bothering about her marriage certificate anyway...
...Was Eva supposed to fly to South Korea to get approval to immigrate from Mexico to the United States...
...He was true to his word...
...Eva, who was supposed to be a permanent resident of the U.S...
...I said I suspected that at $200 an hour, we would probably wind up with a bill of more than $1,500 to $2,000, not less...
...Do you want to hold them while I pummel them—or shall I hold them while you pummel them...
...But there wasn't much I could do...
...Now what...
...he asked in a note...
...by the end of summer 1987, would now have her appointment in the fall of 1988—September 27th, to be precise...
...And the authorities had been rude to her again...
...he suggested a flat fee of $1,250...
...I hate to trash your attorney but—how much are you paying him anyway...
...he said...
...We should have walked out of his office right then...
...our lawyer—call him Snagsby—said that since one of the sons, Ricardo, would automatically become a United States citizen when he turned 21 next month, we might be able to get Eva her U.S...
...consulate in Tijuana asking for a new appointment for Eva...
...Before that, she'd been the live-in housekeeper for my late wife and her previous husband for 11 years...
...I was furious...
...I wasn't going to tell him I'd never sent my phone company bill to the gas company...
...Should it be "sealed" in plastic or "canceled" like a stamp—and if so by whom...
...This is for a third-country national, not a Mexican national, and it's a defunct program anyway...
...Finally, after more than 20 years in the United States, Eva was legal...
...Every few weeks or so, I would call or write to ask about progress—and to make sure there had been no more unanswered letters...
...I suggested they find it quickly or I'd come down and tear their eyeballs out...
...The next day, I took Eva back to the passport office myself—having first Scotch-taped her picture to the letter, covering it completely, "sealing" it...
...That, he said, could save as much as 18 months in "processing and waiting time...
...The Scotch tape solution Snagsby canceled Eva's appointment at the consulate's office in Tijuana again...
...He called back 15 minutes later...
...consulate in Tijuana to get her "green card" giving her "permanent resident" status until—five years later—she could apply for U.S...
...She'd spent all day in line at the passport office, she said, and then they wouldn't accept my letter because it wasn't notarized and because it was written on plain paper, not on my company stationery...
...He said he figured Eva's file was actually in Tijuana, not Seoul, no matter what the INS letter over his signature said...
...These things take time...
...Then I thrust it in front of Ramirez...
...What did that mean...
...I called Snagsby...
...How long would that take...
...The notary couldn't know any of that, I said...
...You don't work for my company...
...He then began writing letters and filing forms with the bureaucracy...
...you work for me—personally...
...I hung up in frustration...
...Her immigration problems were over...
...I wrote back, asking about this oversight and suggesting that even my limited experience with lawyers made me think it unlikely that he would be able to do everything he said he had to do in the letter in a mere eight or ten "billable" hours...
...No answer...
...But he couldn't understand why we had hired Snagsby...
...What do you need that for...
...But there was a slight hitch...
...I was still reminding him of that in mid-October...
...You won't have any problems," he said...
...I bet something like that happened here...
...But we can't get the doctor's test results until early tomorrow morning-6 o'clock...
...True, but not fast...
...No one seemed to know his telephone extension...
...A month later, we received another INS form telling us that Eva's petition was finally in Tijuana...
...Next, we walked to the American consulate, where we had to wait, stand in line, wait, go to one window, wait, go to another, pay $125, wait, go to a third window, wait, go to a fourth window and pay another $25...
...As I told you, she's always been convinced that any contact with the bureaucracy means she'll be deported instantly...
...I gave her the letter and she got the photograph...
...Six months," said another immigration officer...
...Gustafson's secretary said he was on another line, and that Gustafson would "try" to call me back...
...He furrowed his brow as he looked at one of Snagsby's forms...
...Since she was born in Mexico, her file should have been sent to the U.S...
...But the INS said it had been sent to...Seoul, South Korea...
...Eva would be fine now, Ramirez said...
...A few days later, I received another bill from Snagsby—for $240 (plus $3.90 in costs...
...I liked him, my impatience with him and the bureaucracy notwithstanding...
...They would only be nice to someone like me, she said—meaning an Anglo with, in her perception, "money and power...
...You go to the doctor's office in Tijuana, Monday, September 26 for your Xray and blood test...
...Snagsby was as enraged as I was, and we had by now developed a good-natured, bantering relationship...
...I just wanted Eva's file in Tijuana, and I figured he could track it down and get it there a lot faster than I could...
...I could leave...
...All she had to do was wait for her green card to come in the mail to make it permanent...
...I should have said adios right then...
...clearly, the bureaucracy was plotting to deport her, not legalize her...
...There," I said, "it's canceled...
...You tell him," I said, in no mood for a brush-off, "that if he doesn't call me back in the next 30 minutes, I'll call him back—and I'll keep calling every 10 minutes for the rest of both of your miserable goddamn lives until I talk to him...
...Ricardo is legitimate but he doesn't have to be, right...
...For the first time during the entire process, Snagsby had been right...
...We headed for our last stop—the border—where an immigration officer took the sealed envelope that the consulate had given to Eva and stamped her passport— good for six months...
...And none of them had hot-shot lawyers...
...Wonderful...
...Very understanding...
...He shook his head...
...On Sunday, September 25, Eva and Ricardo left Los Angeles for Mexico...
...Yes, that was it...
...I dialed the number...
...Yes, he remembered Eva...
...The boys were already legal residents of the United States...
...You know how you make out checks to pay all your bills at the end of the month and sometimes, by mistake, you put the phone company bill in the gas company envelope and vice versa...
...I knew she was terrified about going to Tijuana...
...And her photo was supposed to be "canceled"—whatever that meant...
...What about the other $10...
...he wrote...
...by David Shaw The lawyer said our housekeeper was "a perfect applicant for the immigration amnesty program—one of the best-documented cases I've ever seen...
...She said they treated her rudely, even nastily...
...They found it...
...I explained in my most pleasant manner exactly what had happened...
...After all, if Eva's eligibility was so perfect, why did we need a high-priced lawyer...
...Helping her to get amnesty seemed the least I could do, especially since she'd been in this country continuously since 1965-1-o-n-g before the January 1, 1982 date required to apply for legal residence and, ultimately, U.S...
...Eva, meanwhile, interpreted the delay as confirmation of her worst fears...
...When we did finally communicate a month later, Snagsby said he hadn't done anything yet because he was still waiting for Eva to send him a form he had mailed to her shortly after our first meeting, asking for information on her marriage...
...That afternoon, she called me at work...
...he needed that, he said, so he could apply for a copy of her marriage certificate to include with his filing...
...Gas company I decided to do the pummeling myself—without his help...
...I don't really need a live-in housekeeper any more, but Eva and her two grown sons—both of whom also live with me—had become almost part of the family, and I'd come to care for all of them (and to rely on her) a great deal...
...A few days later, Snagsby wrote to say, "I have thought it over and decided to pass on the marriage certificate...
...she could only know what I told her...
...We stayed...
...He burst into laughter...
...Eva would probably be a legal, permanent resident "before the summer is over...
...citizenship more quickly if we bypassed the amnesty process altogether and had her apply for citizenship as the mother of a U.S...
...Then she would go to the U.S...
...In tears...
...Hmmm...
...Did Senor Ramirez want the notary's stamp on Eva's picture...
...I called the INS and asked to speak to Ernest Gustafson, the district director, whose signature appeared at the bottom of the form letter asking us to submit a duplicate petition...
...Snagsby said Eva needed a photograph of herself and a letter from me to take to the Mexican passport authorities, attesting to her identity and employment...
...That afternoon, she again called in tears...
Vol. 21 • September 1989 • No. 8
