>> Immigration law sets limits on annual employer- and family-sponsored visas available to foreigners. Depending on the country and relationship, there can be a backlog.
>> For example, a U.S. citizen bringing an unmarried adult son from Mexico faces an 18-year wait. A Mexican child of a U.S. permanent resident faces a three-year wait; a Filipino brother of a U.S. citizen faces a 21-year wait; a Chinese adult daughter of a U.S. citizen is waiting five years.
>> When it comes to job-related visas, a limited supply is available for low-skilled workers — about 5,000 unskilled permanent visas allowed per year nationally. Temporary work visas also are available in fields such as agriculture.
>> There's a price to pay to become a U.S. citizen. Green cards also cost. The application for a green card, which indicates permanent residency and permission to work, is slated to go up to $985. The fee for required fingerprinting would go to $85, for a total of $1,070.
>> Green card holders must wait five years generally before they can apply for citizenship, which costs $595 plus the fingerprinting fee.
When she got approval to return legally to the United States, Maria Olvera scooped up her daughters and went to church.
They thanked God. They hugged friends who supported them during their unexpected two-year stay in Mexico. They gave away their belongings.
And before nightfall, they were crossing the border into Texas.
“We wasted no time getting back to family,” said Olvera, 27.
It had taken nearly 15 years for the native of Guanajuato, Mexico, to get to that point: legal status in the U.S.
As Fremont, Neb., residents prepare to vote June 21 on an ordinance aimed at clearing the city of illegal immigrants, the debate often has focused on frustration over federal immigration laws — what they allow and don't allow and holes and inconsistencies in how they are enforced.
President Barack Obama has said he wants to fix immigration but will need congressional help from both sides of the aisle to move forward, whether yet this year or next year.
Since arriving in Omaha without documentation at age 13, Olvera has witnessed the births and deaths of several congressional bills that would have allowed undocumented immigrants to stay.
She protested, and testified in support of legislation to help those like herself who were brought to this country as youths by their parents.
At a few points along the way, Congress seemed close to passing a law that would benefit Olvera. Even when her marriage to a U.S. citizen seemed to open a door, complications landed her and her U.S.-born kids in a drug-ravaged Mexican border city while she built her own legal case to return.
Though Olvera is now here safe and legally with her U.S.-born husband, her permanent residency is not totally cinched.
Her journey helps trace the recent politics and history of this nation's attempts at revamping immigration laws — and why legal immigration is not an easy task.
***
When the just-turned-teen Olvera crossed the border in late 1995, Congress was grappling with how to transform the flow of legal as well as illegal immigration.
A contentious effort to gain bipartisan agreement led to legislation with a more narrow focus on illegal immigration. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act that President Bill Clinton signed in 1996 strengthened penalties and streamlined the deportation process.
Another law passed that same year restricted federal benefits to immigrants.
Olvera's mother was swept up in the enforcement fervor.
The mom had crossed illegally a few years earlier. Like many, she didn't wait for a visa that would require eligible family or employer sponsors, could take years and may never be open to her.
As Olvera recalls, one day in 1997, she and her brother were summoned to the office of their middle school.
The principal told them their mom had been arrested during an immigration raid on an Omaha packinghouse. It was one of several work site enforcement operations that year that set local records for the number of raid-related arrests.
With no ride home, the Olvera kids returned to class. The school bus later took them to the home of their older sister.
Olvera remembered baby-sitting for a younger nephew and niece as the television news came on. She watched her mom being ushered into a van marked “Immigration and Naturalization Service.”
“It was pretty sad,” Olvera said, tearing up at the memory. “And then to figure out what to do next ...”
Mom was swiftly deported and, under a provision of the 1996 law, banned from returning to the United States for at least 10 years.
Discussions roiled in Washington, D.C. How should Congress deal with families separated by deportation? Should the 8 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States be provided a path to legalization?
Olvera's reality was that she would not see her mom again until she was an adult, with her own two children.
***
Olvera lived with an older sibling and continued her schooling in Omaha, as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling has guaranteed all children in the U.S. an education through 12th grade, regardless of their immigration status.
Olvera continued to excel, despite moving out on her own at age 15. In 2000, she was selected to participate in the summer scholars program for high school seniors at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
That's when the realities of illegal immigration hit harder.
Olvera recalled a UNO administrator handing out activity cards to the group of high achievers. There would be none for her, because she had no Social Security number. The UNO official told Olvera she could not come back without one.
Omaha Public Schools counselor Jim Ramirez stepped in.
Not only was Olvera allowed back into the scholars program, but after she graduated from Omaha Central High School, Olvera was permitted to enroll at UNO under the classification of a foreign student.
Ramirez described her as an inspiration for Nebraska's multiyear effort to extend in-state college tuition to undocumented youths who graduate from area high schools. The Legislature ultimately made Nebraska one of the 10 states that currently have such a law.
Meanwhile, Capitol Hill was abuzz with efforts to pass a federal “DREAM Act” — Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors — that would provide U.S. college students such as Olvera with a path to citizenship.
Around 2004, Nebraska's then-Sen. Chuck Hagel became the Republican engine on a bipartisan bill to provide a route to permanent residency for immigrants in the country illegally.
Also in 2004, President George W. Bush had started his own push for an overhaul of immigration laws, supporting a path to legalization and the broadest changes since 1986 legislation that gave amnesty to more than 3 million undocumented immigrants.
Although the Senate passed a bill with a path to citizenship, differences with a House bill proved too difficult to reconcile. The comprehensive legislation died in 2006. The battle to pass a DREAM Act continued.
Gauging the changing direction of the country, Congress later in 2006 passed an enforcement-focused bill calling for 700 miles of new fences along the U.S.-Mexico border.
By then, Olvera had met her future husband.
A lawyer told them Olvera was eligible for legal residency through their marriage — a route the newlyweds pursued.
***
Olvera packed bags for herself and her daughters and headed by bus to Mexico's Ciudad Juárez. U.S. law mandated that Olvera be in her homeland to seek a waiver needed to apply for legal residency.
But what she thought would be a largely procedural trip turned into a denial, and the two-year stay.
Olvera believes her lawyer sent her with inadequate evidence.
With no money for a new attorney, she researched immigration law and on her own assembled a brand-new, thicker and more detailed case file.
Meanwhile, north of the border, hope for a law that could legalize the status of illegal immigrants in the United States was plummeting.
Despite momentum early in 2006, politicians in 2007 took note of the divisiveness sparked by the mention of any form of “amnesty.”
Then a senator, Obama in 2007 actually angered backers of the bill by repeatedly voting for amendments that threatened to unravel the bipartisan compromise.
Ultimately, the ambitious bipartisan bill drowned in a groundswell of opposition.
Though anxious and apart from her husband and the country she knew best, Olvera was happy for the chance to visit with her parents in Mexico. Four older siblings also are there.
“I wanted to see them so bad,” Olvera said.
But the separation had taken its toll on her folks.
“Things had changed,” she said. “They had changed.”
Olvera moved herself and her daughters into an apartment near the border. The girls, who had never been to Mexico before, enrolled in public school.
The three didn't go out much. The city in which they were living is notorious for drug lords and killings.
So when Olvera got the notice that her self-assembled petition had been approved, she was ready to go.
“I took a picture of that sign that tells you you are now in the U.S.,” she said. “It was the greatest feeling ever.”
A group of missionaries in El Paso, Texas, gave Olvera and her daughters shelter overnight. The next morning they boarded a Greyhound bus. Her husband picked them up. Snow was on the ground as the 2010 new year approached.
His family had a cake waiting.
“My neighbors said, ‘Are you back for good?'” Olvera recalled. “It was awesome, absolutely awesome.”
But Olvera knew the journey was not quite over.
Back on her laptop computer, she researched the final steps of her permanent residency process, which also will permit her to work. While she's been told it is just a matter of time, she still needs the federal government's stamp of approval on an adjustment of status form.
***
Since Olvera returned, the national debate over how to reform immigration laws has reached new heights.
The resurgence accompanied the April passage of a controversial Arizona law described as the toughest measure to date against illegal immigration.
A Nebraska senator said he plans to propose a similar law in Nebraska. Lawmakers in at least 16 other states have said the same. Cities such as Fremont also are contemplating their own laws aimed at illegal immigrants, because Congress has failed to revamp the current system.
Few believe that a comprehensive rewrite will pass political muster this year, although some think pieces of the package could stand a chance.
Obama has applauded bipartisan negotiations led by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saying lawmakers from both parties should craft “serious” legislation capable of winning the American people's support.
While still in draft form, about 20 of the 26 pages of the Schumer proposal deal with enforcement strategies and stopping illegal border crossers. But it also would help clear a backlog of relatives of U.S. citizens awaiting visas, offer more visas to highly skilled immigrants, and provide a path to legalization for illegal immigrants already in the country.
Olvera now watches the debate from a different vantage point; she's out of the shadows.
She is resuming her studies at UNO to finish the last few credits needed for a teaching degree.
All that she has learned has prepared her, she said, to take a more active role in the push for reform.
Many have waited a lot longer than she, Olvera said, to walk on U.S. soil legally.
“It's not easy,” she said. “It can be a lifetime process.”
Contact the writer:
444-1224, cindy.gonzalez@owh.com
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