A friend sends me this, which I urge you to read in full (the point of the story is in the details).
Ex-UI researcher faces deportation
Katarzyna Dziewanowska grew up in the "gray communist life" of Poland. But it was in America where she found a truly nightmarish experience with a bureaucracy. After nearly 14 years as a researcher at the University of Idaho, Dziewanowska has been denied permanent residency by U.S. immigration officials, who say she worked without authorization for eight months. She did that, she and her attorneys say, on the advice of the UI, and she quit working for a time when the university advised her to do so.
But her appeals have fallen on deaf ears with immigration officials. She'd like to take the case before an immigration judge, but that could take months or years. In the meantime, she can't work and has no legal residency status. Because it is a family application, her husband - a UI researcher studying a promising treatment of retroviruses - can no longer receive grants. Her son can't apply for a free-tuition program through his employer.
"She has no legal status," said Michael Cherasia, her former attorney. "She's not able to legally work. Certainly she can't continue to do her research. (Agents) could come to her door any morning, arrest her, detain her and ship her out of the country."
As I say, read the whole thing. Look at what she was researching. Look at her standing in her field. Look at why she now faces deportation.
One thing to say, no doubt, is that Dziewanowska broke the rules. By their lights, the authorities did nothing improper. Also, it seems odd to me that she and more particularly her employer did not see fit to hire a lawyer until it was too late. This is America. You do nothing without a lawyer. But this does not subtract much from the insane disproportion of the outcome--from her point of view, from her family's, and not least from that of the US. What made me groan out loud was the meaningless glitch that ordained it: an application was rejected twice because a photo was not up to specification, in the second case because of glare on a lens of her glasses. From this, the rest followed. Two "rejections", no appeal, life squashed. You have a problem with that?
This is infuriating. It is no wonder we Americans living abroad face so many hurdles that we didn't formerly face from the bureaucracies in the countries where we live. Americans used to be respected abroad and treated with deference, especially in Europe (for good reason); but now we are the number-one target for official immigration hassles. There is nothing a petty Eurocrat loves more than making us pompous Americans jump through hoops.
Of course, this new official skepticism of us is nothing but retribution for these increasingly common, petty traps that the U.S. sets for their citizens when they try to reside in our country and contribute to it. The U.S. needs to wake up and adjust its antiquated rules and procedures to the fact that it's 2008, not 1945.
Why on earth is our government hellbent on destroying all the good will America has earned in this world throughout its history? And why is a Republican administration, which should have been about small goverment, building such a preposterously invasive, counterproductive and inhumane culture of bureaucracy?
Someone should be held accountable for this, by name. Maybe we should ask Condoleeza Rice what she thinks about this episode transpiring on her watch.
Posted by Tim | August 6, 2008 12:14 PM