No soft touch to immigration laws

NUTLEY, N.J — The letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security landed in Neidy Collar's mailbox the first week in September, bringing the same bad news many illegal immigrants receive after they apply for green cards.

"You entered the United States without inspection," the letter read. "Your petition must be denied."

But Neidy Collar, 7, isn't worried about her immigration status. She frets instead about her upcoming spelling test, whether her father will get her pizza for dinner, and whether she will find her Dora the Explorer doll.

Neidy is in the second grade.

Her biological mother, a troubled illegal immigrant who carried her from Guatemala to the United States in 2002, placed her in the care of an aunt, Cathy Collar, and her husband, Joseph. The Nutley, N.J., couple adopted her in 2004.

As U.S. citizens, they assumed they would be able to sponsor their daughter for a green card. But under ever-tightening U.S. immigration laws, that's become impossible.

"All the same rules that apply to adults who walk across the Mexican border apply to this child," said Meaghan Touhey Kay, an immigration lawyer who has consulted the family on the case.

"The law is extremely clear that once someone, no matter how young, enters the United States illegally, they cannot adjust their status."

Experts split

Experts are divided over whether such laws are having the intended effect of discouraging foreigners from illegally immigrating.

But they have created an unintended byproduct: a generation — estimated in the hundreds of thousands — of English-speaking, culturally American young people with few ties to their homelands but unable to work, drive, vote, and in many cases, attend college in the U.S. because of illegal status.

"I want to be a doctor," says Neidy, a precocious bookworm who resists her parents' attempts to get her to speak Spanish at home. But, barring a change in U.S. immigration law, her chances of a career in medicine are slim.

When she turns 17 she will be unable to get a driver's license. Financial aid, or in-state tuition privileges, for colleges will be out of reach. She will be unable to work legally. She could eventually be deported to Guatemala, although it is unlikely while she is a minor.

"I don't think, at this point, she really understands any of this," said Joseph Collar, seated at the dining-room table as Neidy watched television in the basement.

Her federal immigration status never came into play for the Collars during the adoption process, because it is handled by the state. "I think it's starting to affect her a little bit; she realizes something is wrong," Collar said.

Necessary price

Groups that support tougher immigration laws say cases like Neidy's are the price the United States must pay to prevent more illegal immigration. They are winning the debate.

Efforts to pass legislation that would create a path to legalization for young people brought here illegally by their parents have been defeated in Congress three times in the past two years.

"Some of them have compelling stories," said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors lower immigration levels.

"But until we reassert control over the immigration system, it's not appropriate to even entertain amnesty for even sympathetic cases like this because it's essentially guaranteed that there won't be enforcement as long as you keep giving people amnesty," he said.

In his basement office lined with artwork from his native Cuba, Joseph Collar keeps a thick file of letters and legal papers documenting his effort to obtain citizenship for his daughter. He has written several dozen members of Congress.

"They all tell me the same thing — our hands are tied because of the present immigration laws," Collar said.

Until 2001, many illegal immigrants, adults as well as children, living in the United States who were eligible for legal status could apply from within the U.S. after paying a $1,000 fine. Efforts to renew that provision, known as 245(i), have failed repeatedly in Congress.

The Collars say their only hope lies with federal legislation dubbed the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to an estimated 360,000 minors who were brought here illegally by their parents.

Under the act, high-school graduates who arrived illegally in the United States at age 15 or younger would be eligible for residency if they finish two years of college or serve two years in the military.

The act was part of larger immigration-reform bills that failed in Congress in each of the past two years. It was reintroduced as a separate bill but failed a vote in October.

"It's not going to happen," said Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Krikorian says DREAM Act supporters have underestimated the number of people who would be legalized, citing his think tank's study that estimated 2.1 million people would be eligible.

Krikorian also faults supporters with being unwilling to compromise. Had they lowered the age requirement so it covers young children brought to the U.S. it might have had more chance of passing.

If the requirement covered kids under the age of 7, for example, Krikorian said he would consider supporting it. "What they're trying to do is use the little kids as a way of sneaking in a lot of teenagers."

For now, the Collars' only option is to travel to Guatemala and apply for Neidy's green card from there.

But if Neidy is rejected — a possibility considering her immigration record — or something else goes wrong, she could be prevented from returning to the country.

For Joseph Collar, his fight to gain citizenship for his daughter is closely meshed with his own past.

Born in Cuba, Collar left the island at 12 as part of a program known as Operation Peter Pan, which took children of anti-Castro families and others living in Cuban orphanages to the United States and placed them with foster families.

The program, run by the U.S. government and the Catholic Church, was designed to keep the children from being sent to communist work camps.

"Every time I look at her, I look at myself when I came to this country," Collar said. "That's where we match. God brought this child to our doorstep, practically."

Now U.S. immigration laws that once made an exception for him are making it impossible for his daughter to lead the life he has.

"The law is punishing us for doing a good deed," Collar said. "It is punishing us and it is punishing Neidy."