While I realize that the United States has immigration laws and officers to enforce those laws for good reason, the entire system seems a little hypocritical to me at times.
For the past three weeks, we’ve been running stories in the Star about the plight of a Benbrook restaurant owner who’s facing deportation at the end of the month.
Berat Shabani, known to his friends as Benny, owns and operates Fera’s Pizza and Pasta on U.S. 377 in South Benbrook.
Benny has lived in the U.S. for almost 10 years, first arriving as an exchange student when he was 17.
Growing up in Yugoslavia as an ethnic Albanian in the 1970s and 80s wasn’t easy –Benny’s family and friends were persecuted by the Communist Serbian government for their race and political belief. In fact, Benny himself was arrested and beaten by police several times.
Once he escaped to the U.S., he was sent a draft notice from the Serbian army. Since, at that time, young Albanian men were used as human shields for the Serbian soldiers, Benny opted not to return home to almost certain death, and applied for political asylum in the U.S. instead.
While he waited for a decision on that application from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Benny applied for and was granted employment cards to work in his family’s businesses, first in New York and later in Texas.
His application for political asylum was ultimately denied
– some six years after it was filed – because, according to an elite class of INS officers with ties to the intelligence community, Benny had not proven he would be persecuted, if he was returned to Yugoslavia.
I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to grow up in a Communist country, but I’m inclined to think that the Communist government in Yugoslavia would have very little under~standing for a man who dodged a draft notice and applied for political asylum.
I certainly have no ties to the U.S. intelligence community, and I’m not a part of an "elite" ‘team of public officials who are supposed to investigate these things. I’m just a journalist with a bit of common sense, and I guess that if the INS sends Benny home and he’s killed or imprisoned, there will be proof that he’d be persecuted if he was deported.
Today, at age 27, Benny has dealt with shyster lawyers one after another for nearly a decade, trying to find a way to stay
in the home he loves.
He has a wife and a stepdaughter, both of whom are American citizens. He owns and operates a thriving restaurant.
A month ago he was notified that he is to report Feb. 29 to be deported.
This decision on the part of the INS, it seems, was based on Benny’s failure to appear at a hearing in New York in 1998.
Not that he didn’t go – he just went a few days too late. The hearing was set for 9 a.m. April 3, but Benny wrote it down for April 9.
It’s a human mistake– one I myself have made many, many times. It’s unfortunate that this mans entire life may be ruined because of that error.
Attorneys, many of whom have taken thousands from Benny and done nothing to help, have just about driven the final nail into the coffin here.
Charging small fortunes in legal fees and performing very little or no work for the money they were paid has been a common practice for the lawyers Benny has hired.
They’ve told him that they had the situation under control – they had filed all the necessary documents and there was nothing to worry about.
Now he’s about to be deported, INS says the document haven’t been filed, and the lawyers are refusing to comment.
INS officials said Tuesday that they are prepared to help Benny stay in the U.S. past the 29th, but unless the appeal is ruled in his favor, he will eventually have to leave his business and family for 30 to 90 days.
It’s funny, though, how INS is going by the book in case, when in 1996, there were thousands of immigrants naturalized in sports arenas.
One such ceremony, part of an initiative called Citizenship USA that was led in large part by Vice President Al Gore, was held in Texas Stadium.
The ceremonies provide large blocs of new voters made citizens by the current administration – just in time for the November election.
Congressional Republicans raised an outcry claiming that the naturalization process had been so accelerated that 60,000 criminals had been made citizens during the ceremonies.
One Albanian man who’s never broken the law in the United States, though, has to go back to his native land be-cause he missed a hearing.
An official at the INS who’s been very helpful in the reporting of this story told me Monday that most people want the U.S. to have immigration controls and laws until those laws affect their neighbors.
His statement got me thinking – because he’s right, in a way.
I want immigration laws to keep certain criminals in their native nations – we have enough murderers and thieves that are born here, thank you; no reason to import more.
I don’t think, though, that those laws should work against people like Benny, who have been taken advantage of since they arrived in U.S. and are contributing members of the communities in which they live.
In case anyone out there might have forgotten, the United States is an entire nation of immigrants. Everyone who lives here had ancestors that came from somewhere.
What should matter is if
you have a love for the nation and are an upstanding, taxpaying, law-abiding citizen.
If that is the case, the government shouldn’t decide to ship you off to almost certain imprisonment, if not death, be-cause you made one mistake and trusted a whole string of dishonest lawyers.
The INS needs a pinch of compassion for the immigrants it deals with, so that, in the futare, people like Benny won’t be allowed to slip through the cracks of a busy system because they naively trusted the wrong people.
F