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pilipino american deportation: waived through private congressional bills

Since 2002, the Department of Homeland security has targeted 85,000 undocumented Pilipino American (PilAm) immigrants for deportation through the Absconder Apprehension Initiative. Several pieces of legislation like this one before and after 9/11 have greatly affected PilAm immigrant families, leading to increased backlogs (longer periods of time for PilAms petitioned relatives to immigrate to the United States than other countries) as well as deportation en masse.

In addition to the Philippine-U.S. colonial relationship, the particular attention towards immigration from the Philippines post-9/11 has significantly impacted the PilAm community. Two unique PilAm deportation cases involve community movement around rallying support for families to stay in the United States. This is being done by waiving deportation through family-based personal legislation (private bills) sponsored by members of Congress.

First, the Cuevas family of Fremont, California in 2004 attempted to garner support from Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer; senators who have sponsored similar legislation in the past.

Dale Cuevas, an undergraduate at DeAnza community college in Cupertino, California at the time, was targeted for a minor crime. This opened up the Cuevas family's deportation case. However, Dale's father argued that he and his wife's decision to leave the Philippines and immigrate to the United States was due to political asylum, fleeing martial law during President Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorship in 1985.

The Cuevas had consistently applied for asylum over the years. Asylum was denied in 2000 and the family was placed on order to depart voluntarily (instead of forcible deportation). In 2002, the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected their appeal. The case went to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in 2003 and was again rejected.

In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) changed the standard by which an immigrant could establish residency. With this, the Cuevas family were not considered residents. Also, their children had been born in the Philippines. Other families with similar cases who had children who had been born in the US were able to argue that their deportation would place "extreme hardship" on their children who were natural born citizens. In addition, since the Cuevas' did not consult lawyers early on, this made the "extreme hardship" argument harder to justify.

The family's last resort was to seek assistance from the community and elected members of Congress. Although the Cuevas family was able to garner much PilAm community support via thousands of petition signatures, Senators Feinstein and Boxer did not sponsor private bills. Ultimately, the Cuevas family was deported in the summer of 2004.

Currently, the Servanos family of Sunsbury, Pennsylvania faces a case of fraudulent marital status. In the early 1980s, Dr. Servano and his wife, Salvacion, came to the United as a married couple with their sponsors' knowledge. Their mothers had petitioned for them to come on resident visas (green cards to the United States for singles) under the preferential category of unmarried children before their mothers knew they were wed.

The couple married again in New Jersey in 1987; hence, there were two marriages, one in the Philippines and one in the United States. The couple applied for naturalization in 1991 without seeking legal assistance. Like the Cuevas family, legal assistance could have helped solidify arguments for the family that could have prevented deportation. Primarily, the Servanos family could have used the argument regarding "extreme hardship" experienced by the young children (some of whom are U.S. citizens) who are greatly distressed by their parents' deportation. Unfortunately, the government saw the false information of their marital status as a crime.

Both families have children who identify as PilAm. The children do not have strong connections to the homeland and were not informed of their immigration status while growing up. Deportation results in the separation of families and a separation from the country and nationality of which they identify, as Pilipino American. The laws imposed on their identity are based on technical information, based on immigration status--country of birth and marital status.

While presidential candidates for the Democratic party have taken a position for "progressive" comprehensive immigration reform, neither have supported clear stances in support of deportation cases for immigrant communities who have "anchor babies." "Anchor babies" are children who are U.S. citizens that bear extreme hardship from their parents' deportation. Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama argues, in his chapter on race in The Audacity of Hope, that privileging one case that may be similar to thousands of others would undermine the law of the land. This problematic ideology poses immigrants as a monolithic group, and marginalizes distinct histories, conditions, and circumstances that place immigrants from different communities with different needs from a monolithic group. Treating groups with a one-size fits all policy makes a broken immigration system worse.