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A new life slips away

As her husband nears death, a Wimauma woman fears deportation. What of their three kids?

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published December 28, 2005

WIMAUMA - Gricelda Coronado's crowded apartment buzzes. Children run from room to room. The neighborhood is concrete-block bland, but her home exudes warmth, with its mauve furniture, candles and wall art.

Gricelda Coronado and her husband, Hilario, worked years to build a loving base for their three kids, a rung on the American ladder. Now all of it is in peril.

In the bedroom, Hilario Coronado lies paralyzed in a hospice bed, breathing through a respirator. A feeding tube nourishes him. He doesn't speak and is rarely awake. His organs are failing. That is what nine strokes - brought on by diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol - have done to him.

She knows she will lose him soon. The doctor tells her so. That is hard enough. But Gricelda, 41, will also lose her only means of staying in this country legally.

Before he fell ill, Hilario, the family's breadwinner and a permanent resident from Mexico, applied to get his wife a green card. But it never arrived. And as her husband's health deteriorated, Gricelda found herself in a rare immigration quagmire.

The law says if a sponsor dies before the case is processed, the application is thrown out.

"There's nothing she can do," said Mary Bazylak, an official in Tampa for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "I don't see any other avenues for her."

Grief-stricken, Gricelda also worries how she will provide for the children, all American citizens younger than 13.

"Sometimes I just want to scream," she said in Spanish.

But she can't fall apart.

"I have to keep going forward for the children."

Gricelda met Hilario when he came home from the United States to Mexico for a visit in the early 1990s.

They married two years later. She said a teary goodbye to her siblings and moved with her new groom to Florida, where he'd been working in the fields.

Hilario already had his green card. They applied for hers in 1993.

And they started having children.

The Coronados were a lively crew.

"He liked to take us places," said Angelita, the middle child, who just turned 12. Hilario would pile all of the kids and Gricelda into a van and drive them to the beach or the movies or the mall.

He loved to fish. Gricelda and Angelita would stay in the van while the others threw lines off a bridge near Tampa.

Hilario always caught the most.

Gricelda never drove and still doesn't know how. Hilario teased that she would leave if he taught her.

He had his first stroke in 1998. They lived in Texas at the time. He had just returned from working in the fields in Alabama. He felt sick and drove himself to the hospital. Afterward, he was well enough to go back to work.

But about a year or two later, he had another stroke.

The family moved to Florida, where he started collecting Social Security disability, a little more than $600 a month.

Gricelda knew they needed more money to survive.

She wondered: What was taking so long with her immigration paperwork?

She keeps a receipt that shows she visited a Ruskin notary in 1998 and paid him to send a change of address form and a request for a work permit to immigration.

Gricelda tried to keep the household running smoothly, even as her husband went in and out of the hospital. Early this year, he became bedridden.

To earn extra money, the family sold its 1993 minivan for $1,800.

This fall, Gricelda called immigration. When an agent came on line, the news wasn't good.

Her case had been closed in 2003, the agent said. Gricelda said she was told her original application was approved but that immigration lost track of her whereabouts.

Gricelda insisted she notified them of new addresses, including one sent from Florida in 1998. The agent said they never got it.

It could all be irrelevant.

If a sponsor dies, the case is over.

"A beneficiary can request reinstatement and provide another sponsor," said Bazylak, the immigration officer.

But Gricelda doesn't have any other relatives who are permanent residents to sponsor her.

The children, American citizens, could petition for her green card, but not until they are 21. If Hilario were a U.S. citizen, Gricelda could apply for a "widow's petition" after his death. But spouses of permanent residents don't get the same benefit.

Congress makes the rules, Bazylak said.

These cases are rare, said Bazylak and Tampa immigration lawyer John Ovink.

Bazylak said she's seen two in the Tampa area the past six months.

Ovink said he's handled two in the last dozen years.

"It's a totally forgotten thing," he said of the law affecting dying sponsors.

But Ovink thinks there's hope for Gricelda.

Maybe officials would reopen her case and expedite it, he said. They would have to act fast.

Hilario is not expected to live much longer. Hospice care began in March.

During Hilario's 52nd birthday party this month, friends gathered around him to sing songs, play guitar and pray. He opened his eyes. And tears ran down his cheeks.

"It's very hard to live like this," Gricelda said.

For now, Gricelda prays. And nags her children about their grades. She doesn't want them to follow in her footsteps.

All of the children were A and B students until a few years ago, she said.

Their father's illness took a toll.

Last year, Hilario Jr., 10, was sent to Brandon Alternative School for most of the school year after he punched a lunch aide at Wimauma Elementary. A family friend urged that he be evaluated.

"He was so depressed," Laura Cruz said. "He saw himself as the man of the house, but they had no money, no car."

Angelita is her mother's helper.

Hilda, the oldest, who turns 13 in January, has become more rebellious, her mother said. She is the closest to her father.

She talks on the phone or locks herself in her room, trying to numb the anger.

Other times, she sits alone, in a chair at her father's bedside.

"I remember he was trying to say my name," Hilda said about a moment this summer. "I got so mad. He was trying to say my name, and he couldn't."

Each morning, Gricelda nudges the children to kiss Hilario goodbye before they leave for school.

She does not want them to live with regrets later. He might not be there when they return, she tells them.

"Why do you always have to talk like that?" Hilda yells at her.

At his bedside, Gricelda caresses her husband's face. She whispers in his ear, reassuring him she's there. When they have to part, when he's with God, she says, she will provide for the children.

Don't worry about them, she tells him . We will all be okay.

Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 813 661-2441 or amrhein@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 28, 2005, 00:36:14]