Ideal but unwanted immigrants

This week, the United States Senate began hearings on the DREAM Act, for “Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors” Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants to become permanent US residents if they met the following conditions: they were brought to the US before the age of 16; they lived in the country for at least five years before the bill would be passed; graduated from high school; and have no criminal record.

A report on the first hearing of the DREAM Act said the focus of much public attention during the event was Filipino journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jose Antonio Vargas, who has become the “poster boy” for thousands of young immigrants who could benefit from the DREAM Act. Vargas “came out” in an article in the New York Times in which he admitted his illegal immigrant status.

Another such undocumented young man contesting his threatened deportation is Miguel Gulfin, 27, who, said writer Edmund Silvestre in an article published in The Filipino Reporter, was brought to the US by his parents when he was only 7 years old in 1991. “He completed grade school and high school in New Jersey and at one point pursued a college degree in communications, where he was on the Dean’s List,” wrote Silvestre.

Gulfin also served as president of the Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) and “regularly participated in its mission trips to as far as Florida to do evangelization work among students.”

But all those dreams and drive to serve have been dashed by Miguel’s immigration troubles. The US government has threatened to deport not just Miguel but also his parents, Carmelo and Aurelia, as overstaying aliens. A final deportation order has been issued against them, and they have been given until the end of September to abandon their “American dream” and return to this country.

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The Gulfins and Vargas are represented in their dealings with the Immigration and Naturalization Service by the Filipino-American Legal Defense Fund (FALDEF) headed by lawyer JT Mallonga of New York.

FALDEF has filed on behalf of the Gulfins urgent applications for “deferred action status/stay of removal” with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Newark, N.J. The requests cited “compelling humanitarian circumstances” and “harsh consequences” of deporting the Gulfins, said Mallonga who is a partner at Abad, Constancio and Mallonga, a prominent law firm based in New York.

Should the immigration court lift the order, Carmelo and Aurelia could be eligible for “immediate immigration relief,” wrote Silvestre.

Carmelo is the beneficiary of an approved petition filed by his brother, an American citizen, in 1982, while Aurelia was covered in the petition as Carmelo’s spouse. But the visas for the Gulfins became available only 22 years later, in 2004 by which time “their final order of deportation for overstaying had already been issued and had rendered them ineligible for the visas.” Their lawyers contend that if the deportation is lifted, Aurelia and Carmelo would be qualified for adjustment of status. They also have a US citizen-daughter who could petition for them should it be necessary.

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Unfortunately for Miguel, the youngest of three siblings, any sort of immigration relief is unavailable “as no pending petition was filed on his behalf by his US citizen-sister.”

“I have apologized repeatedly to my son for bringing him to the US at a young age and without telling him our status until later,” Silvestre quotes Aurelia, who worked as a medical coder until her immigration troubles prevented her from ever working again.

“But my son kept telling me, ‘You don’t have to apologize, mom, I know you and Dad only want the best for me,’” she confided. “He said we all know that God allows everything to happen for a reason and we should just continue to believe that He will help us find the solution.”

“It’s really been a humbling but spiritually rewarding experience for all of us,” Aurelia added. “We have been able to overcome difficulties and survive the worst only by God’s grace.”

The humbling experience included a six-month incarceration some five years ago at an immigration detention center. Fortunately, while in detention and filing their appeals, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Gulfins to be released on bond while awaiting the Court’s decision.

The family exhausted all legal means until finding themselves “at a dead end,” Mallonga points out. “You could see they did everything they could.”

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It isn’t clear whether passage of the DREAM Act could still help Miguel, who would be separated from his family and friends and the land he has called home nearly all his life if he is deported.

Last December, the DREAM Act passed the then-Democrat-controlled House of Representatives “but fell just five votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.” Since then, the bill has had a difficult time making its way through the halls of the US Congress, with the House now controlled by Republicans and even the Senate wary of earning the ire of conservatives.

Silvestre writes that before Carmelo and Aurelia left their UP Village home in 1991, they were producers and composers of several popular radio-TV advertisement jingles. Among them were the San Miguel Beer “Bilmoko” and “Sh-Boom” jingles and all other San Miguel jingles that featured the late Fernando Poe Jr., and the Johnson’s Baby Powder jingles.

Attached to FALDEF’s stay of removal requests are signatures of some 1,000 people vouching for the credibility and moral integrity of the Gulfin family, none of whom has any criminal record or been a ward of the state. “Ideal immigrants,” in their lawyer’s words.