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Separated by 3,000 miles and mounds of red tape

A 1976 marijuana charge is keeping a Canadian man from living with his wife in St. Petersburg.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published April 1, 2006

When Canadian John Gillis married St. Petersburg resident Amy John in 2004, he envisioned spending his golden years in a balmy Florida climate that would help his arthritis.

Instead, Gillis is in Edmonton, Alberta, where he often slogs to work in the snow. He hasn't seen his wife in six months.

What's coming between them? A 1976 Canadian marijuana charge that keeps Gillis from entering the United States.

"It's ridiculous to deny him when you see so many illegal aliens in the country working and allowed to get drivers' licenses," said John, a hotel supervisor.

"It's a 30-year-old charge, the man is going to be 52 and he's as harmless as can be."

At a time when Congress is debating a bill that would let 11-million undocumented workers stay in the United States, Gillis is being kept out under a controversial existing law. The 1996 Immigration Reform Act bars foreigners convicted of "aggravated felonies" such as murder as well as any drug offense, no matter how minor.

The act is retroactive, meaning it applies even to those like Gillis whose offenses occurred years before the act was passed and who have since led law-abiding lives.

"It's absolutely stupid," said John Ovink, a Tampa immigration lawyer not involved in Gillis' case. "If you've been really, really good and have one simple conviction 30 years ago, these things should age out like they do in criminal court."

A native of Nova Scotia, Gillis was 21 in 1976 when he was arrested in Halifax for possessing two grams of marijuana, enough to make one or two cigarettes. He said the crime was considered so minor he only paid a $103 fine.

At the St. Petersburg Times' request, Canada' s main law enforcement agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, checked its records. A spokesman said the agency could find no evidence of the 1976 case or any other charges against Gillis.

During a trip to Pinellas County in April 2001, Gillis met his future wife while staying at a hotel where she worked.

On a subsequent visit in 2003, two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was returning by bus to Canada when he was stopped on the U.S. side of the border during a random check. Agents for the Department of Homeland Security told him he was in the United States illegally because of the 1976 conviction. He could be fined and jailed if caught in the country again.

"Since 9/11, it's been crazy trying to get in or out," Gillis said.

Canada and the United States share computerized criminal records, but it is unclear how Homeland Security knew about Gillis' 1976 case given that the RCMP today can find no record of it. A Homeland Security spokeswoman said the agency doesn't comment on individual cases.

Because he couldn't return to the United States, his fiancee rented out her St. Petersburg house and moved to Canada so they could marry. But the tenant skipped out and John, tired of the cold and unable to legally work in Canada, decided to move back to Florida last year.

"It was my home," she said.

The couple had one recourse for getting Gillis into the United States. Under the 1996 law, he could apply for a waiver because he had been convicted of possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana. (In Florida, the 2 grams that Gillis had would be a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. In 12 states, there would be no criminal penalty.)

Last May, Gillis went to Homeland Security, which has offices in Edmonton and other ports of entry, and applied for a waiver. He paid $250, gave his fingerprints for an FBI check and provided a copy of the 1976 charge, which he had to obtain from Halifax because the RCMP had no record of the case.

Over the past several months, Gillis and his wife have repeatedly phoned Homeland Security, only to get a recording that instructs them to send an e-mail message, which they have done.

"It's been almost a year, but I still haven't heard from them," Gillis said. "It could take forever. It could be lost on a desk somewhere, or stuck in a pile of paper - who knows?"

Ovink, the immigration lawyer, said waivers are generally granted in cases like Gillis' where the offense was long ago and relatively minor.

"But it's an enormous inconvenience to the couple and they might face up to a year's separation because the agency is really in no hurry to review it."

Gillis and his wife phone each other two or three times a day - John has a cell phone with no roaming charges - but she can't afford to fly to Alberta or take enough time off from work to make the 6,000-mile round trip by car. If Gillis ever gets into the United States, John wants to sponsor him for a green card and ultimately, U.S. citizenship.

As for Gillis, who sells cleaning supplies, he dreams of sitting on his wife's porch drinking fresh orange juice from the tree out back.

"I just want to be with my wife. Here I'm stuck in Canada when they let so many other people through with so much worse things."

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 1, 2006, 16:10:05]