US Immigration Breaks Up Family

[Mulboyne]

AP: Family split between Fla. and Japan by immigration policy; group says such cases common
Keith Campbell and his Japanese-born wife spent his 47th birthday half a world apart because of an immigration dispute. Critics say the case illustrates how making mistakes in getting visas and permanent U.S. residency can lead to life-changing consequences for families. "It's kind of a surreal thing," Campbell said recently as he waited to have his daily Web-cam chat with his wife, Akiko, and their two sons, ages 4 and 1, who are in Nagano, Japan. "We haven't done anything wrong." Immigration officials say Akiko Campbell, 41, committed fraud in 1998 when she entered the U.S. with a fiancee visa after she had already gotten married to Keith. Now she's now prohibited from re-entering the country for 10 years. Since she left in January, Keith Campbell has spent time furiously writing lawmakers, printing bumper stickers, talking to anyone who would listen and putting up a Web site -- www.bringakikohome.com -- to tell their story...American Families United, a group formed last year to advocate for families separated by immigration policies, says what is happening to the Campbells is more common than people think, but the issue has been overshadowed lately by the larger debate over illegal immigrants...The Campbells say that when Akiko's fiancee visa didn't arrive before their planned wedding in Hawaii in June 1998, they were told by an official at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to go ahead and get married and apply to change her status after she was settled in the United States. They were staggered when they went to the immigration office in Tampa in March 2000 for an interview to secure her permanent residency and were told Akiko wouldn't be allowed to stay in the country because she committed fraud...more...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Just one more example of the kind of bullshit I'm talking about. I really am coming to hate everything about American bureaucrats. A bunch of fucking heartless fuck-tards with no common sense.

[AssKissinger]

Two months later, with fiance visa finally in hand, Akiko came to America. Once reunited with Keith, she applied for a status change. Now the U.S. government claims the Campbells broke the law and has accused them of deception and fraud.

Keith and Akiko have spent the last nine years and thousands of dollars trying to rectify the mess. Last year, they finally got good news. They received a letter from the Department of Justice saying Akiko’s visa petition had been approved. All she had to do was to go the U.S. embassy in Tokyo pick up the new married visa and re-immigrate and all would be OK.

I assume that Akiko spent that nine years in the states and in the mean time gave birth to two children. How was she able to stay in the country? What kind of visa was she on? Was her crime coming on a fiance visa after she was already married or was it staying when the other visa was denied or still in the works?

Now Akiko has been stripped of her passport and cannot go anywhere. Unless a hardship waiver is granted, she and the boys are trapped in Japan for at least 10 years

Who took her passport? Only the Japanese government would have the right to that, right? Obviously, it's a Japanese passport.

Just one more example of the kind of bullshit I'm talking about. I really am coming to hate everything about American bureaucrats. A bunch of fucking heartless fuck-tards with no common sense.

For sure

[Charles]

...Since she left in January, Keith Campbell has spent time furiously writing lawmakers, printing bumper stickers, talking to anyone who would listen and putting up a Web site...

Because everybody knows the most effective way to change a government bureaucrat's decision is to print bumper stickers and rant on websites.

[omae mona]

This whole story is too full of inconsistencies to make anything of it. She didn't have her fiancee visa in 1998, so presumably she entered the country on a visa waiver (as a tourist). How was she still there in 2000? This business about her passport being confiscated makes no sense (the US government cannot, to my knowledge, confiscate it and there is no reason the Japanese government would take it - she did nothing wrong in Japan). And there is no reason the kids can't travel - they are US citizens if the father did his paperwork properly.

None of this makes any sense, unless I am really misreading it. Either the family is making up the story, or the writer is really confused about immigration law, or both. My guess is the wife entered the U.S. on a visa waiver (as a tourist) visa in 1998 and just stayed until 2000, and got busted for overstaying when suddenly they went to apply for a green card. If so, I dont' have a heck of a lot of sympathy. This was even pre-9/11, so the processing times were still fast for fiancee visas back then. (maybe they still are now - I'm not sure). Sounds like the couple just decided to do things their own way instead of being patient and following procedures like everybody else.

[Greji]

(maybe they still are now - I'm not sure). Sounds like the couple just decided to do things their own way instead of being patient and following procedures like everybody else.

I'm with you on this omae mona. The story doesn't read right! All of us who have fought the good fight with immigrations should have enough overall idea of the requirements not to get caught in this type of situation.

It doesn't mean that immigrations should get a free pass for not hearing their case for a waiver, or relief from the penalty, but it makes one wonder if the history of how things happened in that case and it puts the guys narrative to serious question.

As just one example, I have been required to do a lot of work on visas and coordinate with the visa section at the US and other Embassies for a lenghty time as a part of my job and I can't ever recall being told to have an individual go ahead and travel to the foreign country and sort the visa out later!

Something is missing in this story, as sad as it may be.

[Mulboyne]

As far as I read it, they applied for a fiance visa in February 1998 so she could travel to Hawaii to get married in June. It didn't come through in time for the wedding but - they claim - an embassy official told them to go ahead with the ceremony which they did. She presumably travelled on a tourist visa. She then returned to Japan to wait for the fiancée visa which came through after a further two months. Once she had that, she rejoined her husband in the US but when she applied to change her status, immigration decided in March 2000 that she had perpetrated a fraud.

They lived together in the US for eight years - during which two children were born - and have employed lawyers since 2000 to resolve the problem. They finally received a letter from the Department of Justice last year saying that their visa petition had been approved but the wife needed to return to Japan to get it. This she did with the children only to discover that no visa was available. The DoJ letter was designed to get her out of the country. She has been told that she now cannot apply for a visa to enter the US for ten years.

That much of the story seems clear enough. It seems a little odd that she was able to stay in the US for so long with her visa status unresolved but it is not impossible. The reference to being "stripped of her passport" - which is mentioned only on their website - makes little sense unless somehow she was granted a temporary US passport during that period and that has been revoked.

If you read her blog, she mentions that her brother works at the Japanese embassy in China.

[Greji]

saying that their visa petition had been approved but the wife needed to return to Japan to get it.

Doesn't that sound strange to you? BS comes to mind. As they have received a letter saying the visa is approved, that is in fact a visa, the returning to any location to have it stamped into a passport is administrative only!

That letter alone (if valid) will stand the test of law, unless it has been superceded by cause! The DoJ issues visas through its Bureau of Immigrations, so if DoJ says it is approved, game set!

Something is wrong with the story here!

[Mulboyne]

Doesn't that sound strange to you? BS comes to mind. As they have received a letter saying the visa is approved, that is in fact a visa, the returning to any location to have it stamped into a passport is administrative only!

That letter alone (if valid) will stand the test of law, unless it has been superceded by cause! The DoJ issues visas through its Bureau of Immigrations, so if DoJ says it is approved, game set!

Something is wrong with the story here!

There does appear to be a letter - it is briefly shown in this Fox video clip.

When he recently spoke to a representative of the U.S. Embassy in Japan, Keith said he was told the USCIS often employs the tactic of misleading people with visa problems so they leave the country....According to Tampa attorney and immigration and naturalization expert Osei Prempeh, the tactic is a common one. Once a person with visa problems leaves United States, they are told they cannot come back for a period of 10 years if a violation has occurred. This way USCIS no longer has to pursue the problem.

I can only assume that the letter is not binding; rather that it indicates that final approval lies with Tokyo but hints that this is a formality.

[james]

they didn't consult with their lawyers upon receipt of the letter. i'm sure any well-versed immigration lawyer would likely have been familiar with such an underhanded tactic and could have advised them to stay or pursue a better course of action.

it's definitely a shitty situation. say what some people will about japan, my experiences with immigration here have always been positive, from getting in on the spousal visa in the first place, no problem getting pr after 5 or 6 years even after i overstayed my spousal visa. i know that while others' and well-publicized experiences don't paint so rosy a picture, there seems to be more deferral to common sense here at times, though i may sound like a heretic for saying as much.

[Greji]

they didn't consult with their lawyers upon receipt of the letter. i'm sure any well-versed immigration lawyer would likely have been familiar with such an underhanded tactic and could have advised them to stay or pursue a better course of action.

it's definitely a shitty situation. say what some people will about japan, my experiences with immigration here have always been positive, from getting in on the spousal visa in the first place, no problem getting pr after 5 or 6 years even after i overstayed my spousal visa. i know that while others' and well-publicized experiences don't paint so rosy a picture, there seems to be more deferral to common sense here at times, though i may sound like a heretic for saying as much.

I still maintain that if the DoJ notifies an applicant in writing that the visa is approved, it is in fact, appoved and official at that point. The DoJ would be hard pressed to defend that as invalid in court if the family sued based on the documentation. DoJ would first be required in some written way to void the approval, before denying the visa. Tactics, Ruses and King's X don't count in legal contracts. The DoJ do not need to resort to a ruse to send someone out of country (assuming they can find them). They call it deportation.

This story still smells of "we were too lazy to do things the right way, so can you give us a visa anyway because we are now kawaiisou".
I'll stand corrected, but in the meantime, it smells!

[Kuang_Grade]

I'm pretty sure that US passports can only be obtained by full citizens. As for the long time in the US, immigration enforcement is just a total fucking joke. Until the last few months, you would need to kill someone to before ICE would go after you. Even if you got arrested for a non captial crime, the odds are the local cops wouldn't hold you for the feds to pick you up, assuming the feds would even bother. For most jobs, all employers have to do see that you have some form of documentation (no matter how sketchy it might look) and they are in the clear. Illegals can even get their own US tax ID numbers (the IRS doesn't care about your status, just that you pay your taxes), driver licenses in many states, open bank accounts, and probably register to vote in most states, although technically they shouldn't do that.

[Mulboyne]

...I'll stand corrected, but in the meantime, it smells!

That's not unreasonable. We only have one version of the story so I'm sure there are pertinent details that are not available. There didn't seem to be a visible document number on that "Notice of approval of relative visa immigrant petition" - it doesn't look like an I-797 or I-140, which are approvals for immigrant workers, but this site describes the legal status of the I-797 as follows:

Once your petition is approved, your employer or agent is sent a Notice of Approval, Form I-797. Approval of a petition does not guarantee a visa. After the I-129 has been approved and notice has been sent to the consulate in your country, you must file a visa application with the consulate.

[Greji]

That's not unreasonable. We only have one version of the story so I'm sure there are pertinent details that are not available. There didn't seem to be a visible document number on that "Notice of approval of relative visa immigrant petition" - it doesn't look like an I-797 or I-140, which are approvals for immigrant workers, but this site describes the legal status of the I-797 as follows:

You're on the wrong visa there. This is an immediate family immigration, in this case spouse based IV petition. After the petition approval is received, they will be instructed to apply for the visa on an I-130 at the embassy like any other visa.

I still think they tried to beat the system and just got caught. Processing for visas may be time consuming, but it is not difficult (if you have all the required paperwork).

The necessary information on how to do it has always been immediately available at the embassy, or now, on the net. Never more than a phone call, or a click away.

As Mulboyne says, we are only getting one side of the story and to me, it is best to stay up wind from it!

[Adhesive]

Doesn't that sound strange to you? BS comes to mind. As they have received a letter saying the visa is approved, that is in fact a visa, the returning to any location to have it stamped into a passport is administrative only!

That letter alone (if valid) will stand the test of law, unless it has been superceded by cause! The DoJ issues visas through its Bureau of Immigrations, so if DoJ says it is approved, game set!

Something is wrong with the story here!

I would imagine, at the very least, they would be able to sue for damages after having reasonably changed their position in reliance of the letter saying it was OK to go...if such letter actually exists, that is.

[FG Lurker]

As Mulboyne says, we are only getting one side of the story and to me, it is best to stay up wind from it!

I definitely agree. It sounds like they tried to pull one over on immigration but immigration wasn't as stupid as they figured.

Enjoy the crime, do the time.

[Greji]

I definitely agree. It sounds like they tried to pull one over on immigration but immigration wasn't as stupid as they figured.

Enjoy the crime, do the time.

Spot on Lurk. Now that we have decided on them doing one to five, it should be noted that waivers for punishment and bans are available and will usually be approved for anything that is not an outright felony.

The only problem is that it will take at lot of paperwork justification and just like, Japan, at bunch of gomena sorrys. Then time and persistance. Also, he needs to think about going face to face when presenting paperwork, mail-ins and lawyers are nice and convenient, but it is still the guy/gal at the receiving window or desk, who will recommend how the request is processed. This again, is time consuming an inconvenient as all hell, but it can be done with results. Just setting up a web page and meeting the mailman at the mail box every morning is not the most effiecient way of getting their visa ban waivered.
JMHO

[AssKissinger]

he needs to think about going face to face when presenting paperwork

Maybe back in the '70's they would meet you in person but not these days. You can't even call on the phone to make an appointment and you sure as fuck can't show up without an appointment.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Maybe back in the '70's they would meet you in person but not these days. You can't even call on the phone to make an appointment and you sure as fuck can't show up without an appointment.

So fucking right.

Different government agency, but I had some issues with my passport in 2001. The only way to call was via an 800 number that cost $5.95 a call. And the only way to speak to someone face-to-face at the passport agency was to pay $40 for an appointment and book it well in advance. In the end those douche bags totally fucked me and destroyed a passport that had both a valid Japan work visa in it that was still good for about 2 years and a valid Brazil tourist visa that was good for another 4 years.

I had sent it in to get more pages added to my passport since it was all filled up. Because it was slightly damaged they wouldn't do that and said it had to be destroyed. When I asked for photo copies of my visas the bitch on the six dollar phone call said "we don't do that!" and was extremely rude to me during the whole call. On top of all the that the replacement passport says in the back that my passport is a replacement for a "mutilated" one. As if I purposely fucked it up.

Shit I got caught in a rain storm and had been traveling on that "mutilated" passport for 3 years and no one in immigration in the US or any other country ever said shit about it.

I remember meeting a married couple who worked in the Federal Building in Seattle for the passport agency shorty after that. I told them the story and they said too bad you didn't know us then, we could have taken care of it for you. So not only are those cunts a bunch of petty bureaucrats, they're also inconsistent in applying their fucking rules.

[Kuang_Grade]

Just FYI for other US frequent travellers...when renewing your passport, they offer one with extra pages (12 more pages I think) but you have to ask for it.
http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/fri/add/add_850.html

You may request more Visa pages in your passport at no additional cost. To do so, please attach a signed request for additional Visa pages to be added to your application.

With US passports now being stamped upon re-entry to the US, it fills up even faster now.

[Mulboyne]

Another account of this story which specifically says that Akiko no longer has a Japanese passport. I find that baffling and I can't see any explanation for it on their website.

...Keith was in Tokyo, Japan on a business trip when he met Akiko at a local hangout in the Roppongi District. After several months of courtship the two decided to get married and applied for a fiancée visa. Told by the local U.S. embassy in Japan that the visa would take about three to four months, Keith and Akiko planned their 1998 dream wedding in Hawaii, even allowing for an extra month. But with the wedding date fast approaching and still no visa, they asked the local U.S. embassy for advice. According to Keith, he and Akiko were told to go ahead with the wedding and simply adjust Akiko's status from a fiancée visa to a marriage visa after she entered the U.S. That piece of advice has led to nine years of immigration nightmares and ultimately got Akiko kicked out of the country. "We did what the government told us to do. Their timeline was wrong," said Keith. "Our initial intent was to get married and our intent is to stay married. There's no fraud on [Akiko's] side."

But after countless hours, three attorneys, and over $10,000 the Campbells' situation remains grim. The couple thought they had finally gotten some good news when the local Tampa immigration office recently told them Akiko's visa petition had been approved. All she had to do was pick up the visa in Japan and re-enter the U.S. But at her visa interview in February, the Tokyo embassy told Akiko her visa application had been rejected and she could not re-enter the U.S. for 10 years. "It was a Gestapo trick," said Keith, who accuses USCIS of knowingly deceiving his wife so she would return to Japan. "She left the country under the pretense that she could come back. She couldn't even pack up her things, she couldn't even say goodbye." Now Akiko has been stripped of her Japanese passport and is living with their two sons in her parents' home in Nagano. Five-year-old Leo doesn't understand why his family is being separated and often asks his mom why they can't go home...

[maraboutslim]

As just one example, I have been required to do a lot of work on visas and coordinate with the visa section at the US and other Embassies for a lenghty time as a part of my job and I can't ever recall being told to have an individual go ahead and travel to the foreign country and sort the visa out later!

I agree that we're not getting the whole story here. But on the point quoted above I can tell you my own experience, where we were indeed told to just go as a tourist and work it out later!

My wife and I were married in Japan in 1993, reported it to the u.s. embassy, had a son, doing the appropriate paperwork for him to get his u.s. citizenship and passport, etc.

Then in 1998 I'd had enough of Japan and wanted to move to California. I left in may of '98 but my wife was pregnant with our second child at the time and stayed in Yokohama. I returned to be there when my daughter was born in july, and did the paperwork for her at the u.s. embassy and got her a u.s. and japanese passports and all that good stuff, and then went back to California to continue my casual search for employment.

My wife began the process of getting a spouse visa to come to the u.s. However, at some point, it became clear that it would not be ready in time for her to join me in November as planned. Here is where I get to the point: The embassy staff in Tokyo told her (in writing even) to just go to the states on a tourist visa and work it out once she got there.

So that's what she did. She came over as a tourist and we applied for her change of status to permanent resident (green card) and they gave her a temporary visa while the application was working its way through the process. During the waiting period she was even was allowed to returned to Japan twice for "business reasons" without any problems, after we filed the appropriate paperwork and paying the fee. About two years after the application was submitted, it was approved no problem and she was given the green card (which aren't green anymore of course). All this took place in california, with no need to return to tokyo.

I believe u.s. immigration did ask us once why she came in as a tourist if we were already married, but we just said that she intended to just visit and for me to return to tokyo with her but i had gotten a job in the meantime and we changed our mind and decided to try life in the u.s. That must have sounded reasonable to them because they didn't give us any trouble in the process whatsoever.

[GuyJean]

An FYI..

Ex-SoCal Councilwoman Could be Deported
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070624/ap_on_re_us/councilwoman_deportation

All of her life, Zoila Meyer believed she was an American. She even won election to the City Council of Adelanto.

But now she is facing a threat of deportation for illegally voting, because she never became a citizen after being brought to this country from Cuba when she was 1 year old.

"To be honest with you, I'm scared. How can they just pluck me out of my family, my kids?" the 40-year-old mother of four said in a telephone interview Friday.

"If they can do this to me, they can do it to anybody," she said.

After Meyer was elected to the council in Adelanto in 2004, someone told officials that she was born in Cuba, prompting an investigation.

Eventually, "the police came to me and said, 'Zoila, you're not a citizen. You're a legal resident but you're not a citizen,'" said Meyer, who now lives in the San Bernardino County desert town of Apple Valley, near Adelanto.

She resigned after 10 weeks in office in Adelanto, a town of about 23,000.

Meyer, whose story was first reported in the Victorville Daily Press, applied to become a naturalized citizen and continued with her life: raising her children and attending two local colleges to earn degrees toward her goal of working in the justice system as a forensic nurse.

However, because she was not a citizen, Meyer faced a felony charge of illegally voting in the 2004 election.

In April 2006, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting and was placed on probation, fined and ordered to pay restitution.

What Meyer didn't realize is that fraudulently voting is a deportable offense.

On June 18, Meyer said, immigration officials showed up at her home and told her to appear at their San Bernardino office.

Her husband drove her to the office on Tuesday, "and they handcuffed me," Meyer said. "They put me in jail and they frisked me and processed me."

"I said 'You're doing this because I voted?"'

The case is unusual but immigration officials were just doing their job when they arrested Meyer, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"People are arrested on immigration charges from all walks of life," she said. "She can plead her case before an immigration judge, if she feels that she has reason to seek release for removal. ... Everybody has due process when they're arrested."

Meyer was released pending a July 18 appearance before an immigration judge who will determine whether she will be deported to Canada, the last point of entry into the U.S. recorded in her immigration record...

GJ

[American Oyaji]

Thats just messed up gestapoish crap!

[joshuaism]

Akiko's immigration mess sounds a lot like a story I read about in the local newspaper about two month ago.

Wedding bells to jail cells

Barbara Straub says love carried her across the Atlantic to marry Heinrich "Henry" Otters of Fredericksburg, but federal authorities crashed their honeymoon before the wedding bouquet even had wilted. As they returned from a day trip to Mexico last month, border agents stopped the newly minted Mrs. Otters on an immigration violation, then held her for more than a month, under conditions she calls cruel and degrading, before sending her back to Germany.

[Mulboyne]

IHT: American-Japanese family split by immigration mistake is reunited in Florida

An American man was reunited with his Japanese wife and two children after the family successfully tangled with the U.S. immigration bureaucracy that had disrupted their lives. Keith Campbell, 47, said Tuesday that he never lost faith that his Japanese-born wife, Akiko Campbell, 41, and their two U.S.-born sons Leo, 5, and Micah, 2, would be allowed to come home again. Akiko Campbell and the two boys flew back to Florida Friday. They had been stuck in Japan since a January visit because of an immigration dispute that underscored how mistakes in the complicated visa process can sometimes have life-changing consequences for foreign relatives of U.S. citizens. The family is back together in Bradenton now, thanks to a rare hardship waiver granted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Keith Campbell, an American who met his wife while working in Asia, said he thinks the media attention, his Web site dedicated to the plight and numerous letters written to lawmakers from friends and supporters helped persuade U.S. immigration officials to issue the waiver...Citing privacy laws, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Chris Bentley declined to comment specifically on the Campbells' case. Hardship waivers are "not the normal turn of events," he said, but are considered on a case-by-case basis...more...

[omae mona]

Oh, cool! I won't bother to follow the rules next time I bring my foreign relatives into the U.S. either. It's way easier to skip the pain-in-the-ass applications and waiting times. On the off chance you get busted, you just need to wage a publicity campaign and everything will be fixed up within a few months.

(As I wrote before, I still believe this story is full of holes and inconsistencies. It sonds like the "victims" probably committed quite a few other no-nos that they have not divulged to the reporter & the public).

[Greji]

Oh, cool! I won't bother to follow the rules next time I bring my foreign relatives into the U.S. either. It's way easier to skip the pain-in-the-ass applications and waiting times. On the off chance you get busted, you just need to wage a publicity campaign and everything will be fixed up within a few months.

(As I wrote before, I still believe this story is full of holes and inconsistencies. It sonds like the "victims" probably committed quite a few other no-nos that they have not divulged to the reporter & the public).

Agreed. You're right on OM. I don't see where anyone can survive the Visa and registration process battles for all that time and not learn anything. They got away with one and probably better get wifey naturalized asap, cause the people at immigrations at the lower level have long memories. They have probably already put wifey dear on the internal watch list for any blatant violations (such as stubbing her toe, or frequent hang-nails) as a reason to revoke her green and deport her. The guys and gals in your local friendly Immigrations Office don't believe in revenge. As soon as they get even, they forget about it.