Coming to America

By Justin Wier

jwier@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Alicia Prieto-Langarica, a math professor at Youngstown State University, remembers flying into Texas when she was studying there as an undergrad.

A customs agent looked at her, looked at her papers, looked back at her and said her papers were fake.

“Mexicans are stupid, so clearly you cannot be doing a Ph.D. in math,” Prieto-Langarica recalled him saying.

The border agent kept coming back into the room and asking her to multiply large numbers by memory, she said.

After an hour and a half,

Prieto-Langarica was allowed to enter the country.

The contentious debate over immigration has continued since the election of President Donald Trump, and immigrants such as Prieto-Langarica see a disconnect between their own experiences and the arguments that dominate the political sphere.

A common claim is that immigrants should just “get in line” and come here legally.

“I always tell people, ‘If you think there’s a line, somebody should have told me about that because then I would have been the first person in that line, and maybe it wouldn’t have taken four years, and maybe I could have seen my family,’” Prieto-Langarica said.

Some local residents who have immigrated from other countries describe an intense, time-consuming and costly process.

Cleveland immigration attorney Richard Herman has his own phrase for it.

“I call it a Kafkaesque maze of the bureaucratic underworld,” Herman said. “It’s highly, highly complex, and one misstep in paperwork can banish someone to undocumented status.”

About 2,500 Youngstown residents – or 3.7 percent – are foreign-born, according to the 2015 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The vast majority of those, 87 percent, had been living in the U.S. for more than five years, but only 75.2 percent had attained citizenship. This doesn’t mean they were here illegally. Residents on student or work visas and those with green cards are here legally, despite not being U.S. citizens.

GETTING A GREEN CARD

Prieto-Langarica first came to the U.S. in 2006 to do research at the University of Texas at Dallas as an undergrad. Getting cleared for the required training visa took three months and cost her $1,000.

“My entire income that paid for my house, my everything was a little less than $200 [per month],” she said. “So $1,000 was a lot.”

She worked in a neuroscience lab and when her professors suggested she complete her bachelor’s degree at the university, she agreed. Getting a student visa took another six months.

Then a graduate school recruited her. The assistantship they offered paid $13,000.

“You’re going to pay me more money than I’m ever going to see in Mexico, and I get to keep studying?” Prieto-Langarica said. “So yeah, why not?”

In February 2012, six months before she would graduate with her doctorate, she had a job at YSU.

From the time she was offered the job at YSU, Prieto-Langarica had two years to apply for residency the easy way. But someone at YSU did not file the appropriate paperwork, so she had to do it the hard way.

Prieto-Langarica sought a national interest waiver, which required her to show she’s exceptional in her field and that it’s in the national interest to have her here. She qualified because she’s in an area of national need.

“If you have a Ph.D. in math, chances are that you can get a much better job that pays much better doing something else [other than teaching],” she said. “So there are definitely not enough Americans to fill those positions.”

But to prove she is at the top of her field, Prieto-Langarica had to obtain letters from respected mathematicians. Among others, Carlos Castillo-Chavez, who served on President Barack Obama’s committee on the National Medal of Science, wrote a letter for her.

It still wasn’t enough; she had to get a second round of letters to make her case.

In January 2016, she finally got a letter saying she would be granted residency.

YSU Provost Martin Abraham said the university made changes in leadership in the international office, and the administration is unaware of any issues since those changes were implemented.

LAWYERS, FORMS & MONEY

Prieto-Langarica spent $2,700 obtaining her green card: Applications cost $1,200, her lawyer charged $1,000 and she had to pay $500 for a medical test.

“This is with the help of the university,” Prieto-Langarica said. “Normal people pay $6,000 to $7,000 to immigrate. ... It’s a lot of money.”

Government fees alone, including medical exams, typically run about $2,000, Herman said.

Then there are lawyers, who can present another hurdle.

Even licensed lawyers may not be skilled in immigration, Herman said, or they may be predatory in practice. Fake websites that look like government websites charge people for forms that are freely available, and those forms have been multiplying as well. Even current citizens have trouble navigating the system.

Herman said a lot of people calling are Americans trying to bring a spouse into the country.

“A lot of folks ... are getting ripped off and getting sent into a deportation situation without even realizing the mistakes they made,” he said.

In the past, Herman’s wife and her family abruptly became undocumented. They came over from Taiwan to start an Italian restaurant in central Florida. Their immigration status was dependent on running a business, and when the restaurant failed, they lost status.

His wife received a green card when President Ronald Reagan granted undocumented immigrants amnesty in 1986. Now she’s a doctor in Cleveland.

BECOMING A CITIZEN

Joao Maceira immigrated from Portugal for the reason a lot of people come to America: “My cousin told me I would get rich,” he said.

This was in 1989. Maceira was 19. He moved to New Jersey and began working in construction. In 1997, he relocated to Ohio – his first wife’s family was from the area.

Now he lives in Struthers with his current wife Melanie. The promises of riches never came, but he still works in construction and has a nice home with a dog who enthusiastically greets visitors. There is a picture above his television with an American flag and the date March 2, 2017, the day he became a citizen.

Maceira received his green card in 2008, nearly 20 years after coming to the country. He said the process wasn’t too arduous.

But traveling was difficult. Even with a green card, he had to get a passport from the Portugese Embassy in Washington, D.C., a process that would have taken about six months.

As a result, it’s been 28 years since he’s been to Portugal.

That’s one factor that led him to apply for citizenship. His green card was also up for renewal in 2018.

Maceira applied for citizenship in October 2016. The most difficult aspect of the process was studying for the civics test. He had to learn the answers to 100 questions, any six of which could appear on the test.

Becoming a citizen was a major achievement, he said. He and his wife had a party with friends and family to celebrate.

“It was a big weight off his shoulders,” his wife said.

He can also travel on a U.S. passport. He has plans to travel home to see his mother this winter.

STUDYING ABROAD

Irem Ekinci, a Turkish citizen, hadn’t considered coming to America until her uncle offered to help her earn her master’s degree in the United States. She’s studying industrial and systems engineering at YSU.

The requirements for a student visa aren’t as stringent as other types of immigration. The biggest burden for Ekinci was making sure she had $24,000 in her bank account – she had to prove she had enough money to support herself during her time at YSU.

Still, Ekinci described an application and interview process that was intense and stressful. “I was really just thinking, ‘What if they don’t want me?’” she said.

The agents asked several questions about her family, about her past, about her plans in the United States. The answers have to be consistent. If a passport shows that someone has visited countries such as Iraq, that can provoke further questioning.

“The most important thing, they don’t want to hear that you want to stay in the United States,” Ekinci said. “That might be a reason that they reject right away.”

Ekinci had to provide documentation showing that she had been accepted to the university and had a place to live. She had about six weeks to get all her records in order, which she said added to the stress.

“I really decided not to come to the United States three times,” she said.

Now that she’s in the United States, political events have rekindled her concerns. She was calm and relieved when she arrived, but she said things are changing under President Donald Trump.

She worries about an increase in hate crimes.

“It’s just so hard for everyone to come here from different countries because they’re already having so much difficulty away from their culture, their family, their friends,” she said. “One more extra bad thing is

really affecting those people so much.”

GOING HOME

Ekinci hasn’t seen her family in two years and plans to visit Turkey this summer. But what if she can’t renew her visa? What if she can’t come back?

“My country is not in this list of six countries,” she said. “But I’m still scared because seeing my ID I look like a Muslim, even though I’m not a religious person.”

Herman said these are real concerns.

“It’s almost like Russian roulette to some degree, for some of these folks,” he said.

While the State Department handles visas, customs can deny visas at the border. Once someone is granted status as a student, Herman said the visa becomes legally irrelevant. If they want to leave and return, they need to obtain a new visa, and then go through customs when they arrive.

“So the embassy is not the only gauntlet to run,” Herman said. “It’s also the border, and the border seems increasingly emboldened to do things that are way outside of their job and jurisdiction.”

The day after Prieto-Langarica received her green card, she purchased tickets to fly to Mexico over YSU’s spring break to visit her family. She hadn’t been home in five years because while green card applications are pending, applicants can’t leave the country without special permission.

The day after buying tickets, Donald Trump was elected president.

She had second thoughts, especially when Trump issued his executive order limiting immigration from certain countries. Her lawyer advised staying home, and she considered giving her boyfriend power of attorney in case she wasn’t able to return and had to sell her house.

“These things are kind of painful,” she said. “I’ve done nothing bad or wrong. All that I’ve done is try to come here and educate students.”

Despite those concerns, she returned home to attend her sister’s wedding and see her brother become a Catholic priest. She also got to see her grandmother, who is 97.

“She cried a lot,” Prieto-Langarica said. “She made me cry, too.”

With the election of Trump, Herman said many Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents feel emboldened to arrest, detain and deport. But he argues it shouldn’t be that black and white.

As in his wife’s case, 40 percent of undocumented immigrants come here legally and lose status. Sometimes it’s intentional; sometimes it isn’t.

“It’s not a black and white world,” Herman said. “Our law shouldn’t be black and white either. There should be nuance. There should be compassion. There should be justice.”