[Vision2020] Ex-UI Researcher Faces Deportation

[Sue Hovey]

God.  How awful.  Wonder when this will come out in our local press.  I 
didn't even see it in the Trib today.

Sue H
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Hansen" <thansen at moscow.com>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2008 1:59 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] Ex-UI Researcher Faces Deportation


> "'She's a damn good scientist,' said Patricia Hartzell, professor of
> biology and biochemistry and former dean of Dziewanowska's
> department. 'She's really good.'
>
> Her husband is studying a toxin found in sheep and cattle that shows
> promise in fighting retroviral diseases. Such diseases include AIDS in
> humans and a host of diseases in animals, and there is currently no cure
> or vaccine for them."
>
>>From today's (August 3, 2008) Spokesman Review -
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ex-UI researcher faces deportation
> By Shawn Vestal, Staff writer
> August 4, 2008
>
> Katarzyna Dziewanowska grew up in the "gray communist life" of Poland.
>
> But it was in America where she found a truly nightmarish experience with
> a bureaucracy.
>
> After nearly 14 years as a researcher at the University of Idaho,
> Dziewanowska has been denied permanent residency by U.S. immigration
> officials, who say she worked without authorization for eight months. She
> did that, she and her attorneys say, on the advice of the UI, and she quit
> working for a time when the university advised her to do so.
>
> But her appeals have fallen on deaf ears with immigration officials. She'd
> like to take the case before an immigration judge, but that could take
> months or years. In the meantime, she can't work and has no legal
> residency status. Because it is a family application, her husband - a UI
> researcher studying a promising treatment of retroviruses - can no longer
> receive grants. Her son can't apply for a free-tuition program through his
> employer.
>
> "She has no legal status," said Michael Cherasia, her former
> attorney. "She's not able to legally work. Certainly she can't continue to
> do her research. (Agents) could come to her door any morning, arrest her,
> detain her and ship her out of the country."
>
> The rejection of her petition is part of a long pattern of bureaucratic
> communications straight out of Kafka. Her application for residency
> languished for years, status unknown. Frequently, neither Dziewanowska,
> her attorneys nor her colleagues could reach officials in person to
> discuss the case, they say. Seeking information about her case, she once
> called a number she found at an agency Web site; the person who answered
> could only provide information from the Web site.
>
> "They eventually put me in a situation where you start to feel like a
> criminal, when you don't have any intention to break the law," said
> Dziewanowska, 64.
>
> Her supporters say that Dziewanowska's brief period of unauthorized work
> was a simple error, and that her record as a researcher and visiting
> worker should count in her favor. She's been without work since October.
>
> "This is kind of an 'Alice in Wonderland' experience," said Cherasia, who
> specializes in immigration law. "The frustrating thing with this case is
> there has been no way to correct a simple, unintentional mistake."
> The "sad, sad joke about all this," he says, is that Dziewanowska and her
> husband, Witold Ferens, are doing important, possibly breakthrough
> research.
>
> Dziewanowska was recruited to the UI in 1994 because of her research
> background, and she's been involved in studying methods of fighting agents
> of bioterrorism such as the plague.
>
> She's earned FBI clearance for that research - at one point, she was
> granted such clearance while immigration officials were refusing to
> approve her authorization to work.
>
> "She's a damn good scientist," said Patricia Hartzell, professor of
> biology and biochemistry and former dean of Dziewanowska's
> department. "She's really good."
>
> Her husband is studying a toxin found in sheep and cattle that shows
> promise in fighting retroviral diseases. Such diseases include AIDS in
> humans and a host of diseases in animals, and there is currently no cure
> or vaccine for them.
>
> "These are the kind of people you want to kick out of the country?"
> Cherasia said. "Somebody isn't thinking. They had the discretion to
> approve her petition, and they refused."
>
> A representative of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said she
> could not discuss specific cases, but said the agency makes information
> available to applicants online and via telephone, and said people can make
> appointments to discuss their case in person.
>
> "We make all the information about immigration laws very accessible," said
> Sharon Rummery, USCIS spokeswoman in San Francisco.
>
> No answers from the UI
>
> Top administrators at the UI would not answer questions about
> Dziewanowska's case, or about whether university representatives provided
> her with faulty advice. The university's media-relations office released a
> general statement, saying that it has obligations to the government when
> accepting foreign students and faculty, but that the ultimate
> responsibility lies with the individuals.
>
> "In instances where an application for permanent residency has been filed,
> the university must confirm employment and other information," the
> statement reads. "However, we do not and cannot make immigration-related
> decisions for or on behalf of individuals and their immigration status."
>
> Under immigration law, if an employer gives incorrect advice to an
> employee, the responsibility for following the law still rests with the
> worker. But foreign-born employees often rely on universities to help
> negotiate the labyrinth of immigration law.
>
> The UI was involved at virtually every stage of her dealings with
> immigration officials, and it filed several applications on her behalf.
> Dziewanowska says she simply relied on the university's human-rights
> department about when she was approved to work and when she was not.
>
> Hartzell and others have appealed to members of Congress to intervene on
> Dziewanowska's behalf. She's also pressed the university administration to
> acknowledge its mistake, in an effort to help with Dziewanowska's appeals.
>
> "They've really washed their hands of the case," Hartzell said. "They're
> just protecting themselves legally all the time, instead of doing the
> right thing."
>
> 'My big mistake'
>
> Dziewanowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1943, in the midst of attacks
> and occupations by both Germany and the Soviet Union. She grew up under
> the communist regime that arose after World War II, and entered academia
> after earning her master's at the University of Warsaw in 1966.
>
> Over the next few decades, she built her research career between positions
> in Poland, Canada and the U.S. By the early 1990s, she was recruited to
> the UI to help with plant-breeding research.
>
> She came to the Palouse in 1994 - "maybe my big mistake," she said.
>
> She worked on a visa for a few years, and then applied for status as an
> outstanding professor or researcher - a precursor to applying for
> permanent residency and a green card. She was granted outstanding
> researcher status and, with help from the UI, applied for permanent
> residency in 2003.
>
> While that application was considered, she was required to apply for
> annual temporary work permits, known as Employment Authorization
> Documents. In the fall of 2004, a problem arose with her second EAD
> application.
>
> Based on new requirements, Dziewanowska's application was rejected twice.
> The first one came because she submitted a profile photo instead of a 
> face-
> forward one, because standards had changed after she filed an application
> under the previous rules. The second occurred because her second photo
> included glare on one lens of her glasses.
>
> The letter notifying her of the second rejection came in September
> 2004. "There is no appeal to this decision," the letter read.
>
> Meanwhile, her previous EAD had expired, but the UI's human rights office
> told Dziewanowska she had a 240-day grace period in which she could
> continue to work, according to Dziewanowska, Cherasia and e-mail
> communications from the UI.
>
> Cherasia said university representatives simply mixed up the rules - one
> type of work visa does have a grace period after expiration, but EADs do
> not.
>
> "If you have an EAD, and your EAD runs out, you have to quit working,
> period," he said. "I think someone got the two mixed up."
>
> So, as Dziewanowska worked to clear up the problem, she continued her
> research at the UI. At this point, she was involved with research on the
> plague - a subject of great concern to federal officials concerned about
> bioterrorism. Her work was a crucial first step in the process - purifying
> the proteins from the plague for later research steps.
>
> She did this work over the next several months. In the meantime, through a
> convoluted series of communications, she was told that her application had
> been improperly denied and would be approved. Then she was told that the
> original denial would stand. Then, in April 2005, she was told to stop
> working by the UI, which said her grace period had expired.
>
> "So I stopped work on April 10," she said.
>
> In the meantime, she filed another EAD application - "New photograph, with
> no glare!" she said - and it was approved.
>
> But when her application for permanent residency was eventually denied
> last June, it was the period of "unauthorized employment" that was cited
> as the reason.
>
> 'No room for mistakes'
>
> Throughout the process, Dziewanowska had urged UI to retain an immigration
> lawyer to help with the case and been told it wasn't necessary, she said.
> She eventually hired Cherasia on her own, and he filed a motion to have
> the case reconsidered. It was rejected in March.
>
> "It was a real brush-off," he said.
>
> There was little rationale offered for the decision, he said, though
> immigration officials have said that as a university professor,
> Dziewanowska should be able to follow the laws. She now has hired Maria
> Andrade, a Boise attorney who specializes in "removal" cases, but she's in
> a nebulous position.
>
> Once someone's application for residency is rejected, the next step is to
> be ordered to court before an immigration judge. But that could take a
> long time - perhaps years - and in the meantime, Dziewanowska has no way
> to earn a living. She's a year away from retirement, and she and her
> husband have a new home in Moscow. She's not sure what she's going to do
> now.
>
> "I never tried to break the law," she said. "I tried to play according to
> the rules."
>
> Her attorney, Andrade, said it's unfortunate that the university hasn't
> stepped forward to take more responsibility. But even if it did, the
> burden for meeting the laws would still fall to Dziewanowska.
>
> "On the immigration side, there's no room for good-faith mistakes in the
> law, and this is one of them," she said. "It's a sad case. It's a very sad
> case."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> It really makes you wonder, doesn't it?
>
> Just another undocumented worker, right guys?
>
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college
> students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."
>
> - Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)
>
>
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>
>
>


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