A Family’s Courage

Jorge G. Castaneda in his excellent 2011 book entitled MANANA FOREVER: MEXICO AND THE MEXICANS captures the Mexican character of individual responsibility over collective efforts. Mexicans, Castaneda says, tend not to trust government or other collective social efforts and rely instead on their own initiative and skills to survive. For one Mexican doctor who lives in our community, the will to survive and succeed overcame fear and intimidation.

Just over a year ago, the doctor was kidnapped at gunpoint in front of his son in the middle of his hometown in Mexico. Threatening calls from extortionists followed at his office and home. Fearing for his life and that of his family, he brought them to the U.S. to stay with his sister while he tried to determine what he could do in a foreign country that would not allow him to stay or work. Going home permanently was not an option. He and his wife had successful professional careers in Mexico as a doctor and accountant. In the U.S. the couple was unauthorized for work of any kind due to their visitor status and money was tight. Although his sister had a good job, supporting six people, three of which are teenagers, was difficult and they soon sought help from our firm to try to find a way for him to live and work in the U.S. legally.

A small glimmer of hope emerged from the grim situation when he disclosed that many years ago his mother, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico living in Mexico, had applied for legal permanent residency for his sister, his brother and himself. He did not complete the process and remained in Mexico because he was attending college while his sister and brother came to the US and eventually became US citizens. Now that he was married and over 21, the quota system made that route to permanent residence hopeless.

We probed further to gain facts relating to the possible breakthrough: Was he a U.S. citizen by derivative status through his mother? Under certain circumstances a person born outside the U.S. to one U.S. citizen parent is a derivative U.S. citizen. After digging further into his family’s past, we discovered that his mom had lived in the U.S. for several years before marrying his father in Mexico. Now came the hard part: finding proof that his mother had lived in the US for at least 10 years of her life, five after the age of 14. She didn’t remember many details of her time in the US, only the city and state she lived in and with whom she had lived.

Many weeks later, after an attorney and paralegal spent countless hours of ancestry research and correspondence with the family, schools, churches, the Social Security Administration, and Citizenship and Immigration Services (the former INS), we were finally able to piece together just over 10 years of living in the US.

The documentation was organized and a timeline created. A US passport application was submitted in December 2010, along with the applicable regulations, timeline and documents showing his mother’s time spent in the U.S. The initial passport application was rejected and the application was resubmitted with a request for supervisor review in late January 2011.

After a request for extension of their visitor status was denied, the outlook became even grimmer for the family with funds running out and no relief in sight. They knew the penalty for staying in the U.S. longer than permitted but did not want to return home, where conditions were growing more dangerous by the day. Finally, the husband and wife decided to risk a return to Mexico to attempt to earn some badly needed income while the children would remain in the US with their aunt and cousin.

In March 2011, a supervisor contacted our office and indicated that he had all the required documents and he would approve the passport application if we could provide the mother’s original naturalization certificate (even though the government itself should have had proof of the document it issued). Mom located her original naturalization certificate several months later and it was submitted to the US Passport Agency in late June.

Three weeks later our office contacted the passport officer with whom we had originally spoken in March. He indicated the application was on his supervisor’s desk and would likely be approved. Within three days of this call, the US Passport Agency sent the US passport to our office via Federal Express. Bingo, he is now a U.S. citizen!

In just under a year’s time, our client went from being scared for his and his family’s life in their hometown to being a U.S. citizen. Additional efforts are underway to complete the process for the wife and children. He is now eligible to sponsor his wife and children for permanent resident green cards. The children, under 18 when their father received his U.S. citizenship, will be able to obtain U.S. passports for themselves once they receive their green cards, and the wife after 3 years of permanent residence.

The result? A Mexican family has hope and excitement for their future in the US due to a father’s desire for a better life for his family coupled with our team’s expertise in researching legal evidence of ancestry.