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Letter to the editor

Red tape may make for a blue Christmas

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS, Times Staff Writer
Published December 14, 2007

TAMPA - One December morning before 8 a.m., dozens lined up outside the doors of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, waiting.

Among them stood a family who could fit in right next door. Dad is an engineer. Mom worked in an office. Spiky-haired Kid likes soccer, Funyuns and Mountain Dew.

But this family has been hit with problems most couldn't imagine. The spiral began when they left Cuba for religious freedom. After a potentially fatal disease and a four-country route, they ended in Tampa only to find more worries.

A momentous nationwide delay in immigration paperwork has them scrambling to pay rent since their permission to work hasn't arrived. They've spent four months in line. This day they left their fingerprints with the federal agency, another step.

But they're really waiting to feel like they're home.

The police summoned 45-year-old Rolando Lopez to their Havana headquarters one day in 2001. Rolando wondered if he had an unpaid traffic ticket or had been caught selling ice for under-the-table cash.

But it was worse. Police had tapped Rolando's phones and had camera footage that showed him going to a backyard evangelical church, against Cuban law.

One officer commanded Rolando to spy on the congregation. Rolando thought about his choices: Be like Judas. Or leave.

In 2002, he secured a passport to Haiti, which seemed an easy way out of Cuba. Then he'd cross the border to the Dominican Republic, where people spoke Spanish. Unable to get passports, his wife, Zaida Pino, and son, Adian Lopez, stayed behind.

Then, just before Christmas 2005, he got a bad fever. Doctors said it was leukemia.

The family sought treatment in the United States. To get here they traveled to Guatemala, then Mexico, where they paid someone to drive them to the border. That was 2006.

They stayed with Zaida's brother in Miami, sleeping in one room. Then, just before Christmas, Adian fell so ill he was hospitalized. Doctors said it was diabetes. Rolando's doctor recommended they move somewhere less stressful. So in July they moved to Tampa.

A yearlong grace period that permitted Zaida to work expired in August. She submitted her application for residency, along with one for work authorization, but has not received either.

Here's why: Last summer the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services raised its fees from $395 for permanent resident status to $1,010. The agency was bombarded with applications before the change and processed 2.5-million in July and August, more than double the number in summer 2006. Response times stretched from two weeks to almost four months.

Because they are from Cuba, the family can't be deported. But Zaida's brother can't afford to lend the family more money. She ponders taking a bus to Miami to find undocumented work. She doesn't know if she'll be home for Christmas.

Rolando also waits, for biopsy results for six lymphomas. He wonders how his brother will get to the United States, if Rolando needs his bone marrow.

Still, Rolando has never been happier. His 13-year-old son, Adian, gained weight, and eats better than in Cuba. Rolando is active in a church, Tabernaculo La Fe on Nebraska Avenue.

Here, he never needs to look over his shoulder.

Fast facts

About Holiday Hopes

Holiday Hopes is a series profiling people in need and their wishes this holiday season. This is the last story in a series of four. North of Tampa will update readers if and when wishes are granted. To read other Holiday Hopes stories, go to hillsborough.tampabay.com.

Their wish

Zaida Pino, 47, who is caring for a husband with leukemia and a son with diabetes, struggles to pay the rent since arriving in the United States from Cuba. A nationwide backlog in processing immigrant applications makes it impossible for her to find work legally. Rent is due the first of the month, long before she expects her work permit to arrive. She needs help paying the rent, $690 per month, plus utilities.

To give: Contact Kimberly Kinsler at the Homeless Education and Literacy Project, (813) 272-0673, ext. 227.

[Last modified December 13, 2007, 07:48:42]