This American Life - Part 2

So Act II of This American Life that I blogged about before talks about immigration. Basically, if an immigrant's citizen spouse dies within 2 years of marriage, the immigrant can no longer be a resident (although their American born children can stay).

Here's the best part. The immigration service debunked this rule in the 70s and strangely semi-reversed themselves later.

In the 70s, they said, "wait, we don't have jurisdiction to decide whether you are a spouse or not." In the 80s, they said, "wait, in the 70s, we were wrong. We can decide that you are not a spouse. AND, you cannot appeal this decision. BECAUSE we don't have jurisdiction."

If you're going wuh-huh?!? Yah....me too.

Ah, it gets worse. The government has lost in court. But they still find ways to deny residency. In one case, they said that they would abide by the court's ruling, but only in cases in the 9th circuit court, and only if the spouse can prove that they have no where else they can go and that their home country is too dangerous to live in.

Ah, it gets worse than that. For those whom they say they will abide by the ruling in the 9th circuit court, they are STILL going to deport the immigrant on the basis of an anti-terrorism law from 2005, which says that the immigration service can , by its own discretion, reject any immigrant for any reason, without telling anyone what the reason is, AND this rejection is not subject to ANY court's review.

These are not abstract "gee, that's weird" kind of ancient blue-laws like banning bread sales on Saturday. These are destroying real families.

They conceivably apply to my family. My mom is not a citizen; she's a resident. So, conceivably if my dad dies, she could be deported to Cuba on the basis that she is not a spouse.

Un.be.lievable.