Across the miles

Kim Romero always planned to buy two tickets for her return trip.

She never anticipated riding back across the country, to Waynesboro, with an empty seat beside her, with an empty feeling inside her.

But as her bus rumbled down the continent in February, through the South and into sunburned Texas, Kim Romero knew she found the right path. She and her husband Rigoberto “Rigo” Romero agreed before he left weeks earlier: before immigrating back to the United States from Mexico, he’d do the required paperwork at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez on the United States border.

“When it all boiled down to it, it was the right thing to do. In the end, he’s got to go home to get the visa, to get the green card, to live here,” she said. “My problem was when they sent us this letter saying he needed to be in Ciudad Juarez. They already knew they weren’t going to let him back.”

For almost a year, Kim Romero, 38, has worked to unravel the intricacies of U.S. immigration law that hover over the estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants in Virginia. She has made her name a familiar one in federal immigration offices accustomed to hearing from attorneys, not wives.

After hundreds of calls, thousands of dollars, 10 pounds of paperwork and uncounted prayers for his return by Christmas, Rigo remains in Mexico. But Kim persists, splitting her world between her children, work at Sharp Shopper grocery store and phone calls into the impersonal system.

Her knowledge of the law surprises experts familiar with her endeavor. And Kim said she believes she’s filed the right forms to get her husband back into the U.S. legally.

“He’ll come home,” Kim said. “Rigo will be home.”

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On the bus ride to Mexico, Romero reminded herself of the righteous quest to happiness, the trail endorsed by her pastor, the Rev. Randall Black, of Faith Point Christian Center on Arch Avenue.

She remembers Black’s words to Rigo.

“Now that you’re a Christian, you need to obey the law,” Black said, thinking Rigo would go to Mexico and return in a few months.

His words reinforced a decision they made in 2006, just two years into their marriage, to file for Rigo’s visa.

A year later, immigration officials advised Rigo, 26, to return to Mexico to complete the process. With hesitation, they decided he would go.

But illegal immigrants who stay in the U.S. for more than a year, if caught, face a mandated 10-year bar against returning under reform that became law in 1996. Many immigrants aware of the bar choose to stay in the U.S., flying under the radar, while working toward a visa, said David Leopold, a Cleveland-based attorney and president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services complete 30,000 immigrant applications for visas every day, according to the department. Of those, about 4,000 are filed by American relatives and fianceés, like Kim. Immigration services refers questions to a voluminous Web site or, in some cases, to community groups connected to attorneys who may work pro bono.

Laura Vazquez analyzes legislation for the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, the National Council of La Raza. She said the 1996 reform separates many families.

“There is a perception that a U.S. citizen marries someone and the next day someone’s legal status is adjusted and there’s no problem,” Vazquez said. “Prior to ‘96, it was pretty much that way.”

Kim initially thought their marriage would make for an easy transition for Rigo. But it has taken her a handful of filings to get to her latest waiver application. In it, she argues that without Rigo she will suffer “extreme hardship,” a standard for granting waivers.

She asked for help from Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, who has written letters to immigration services on her behalf.

“Her husband tried to right his wrong,” Goodlatte said. “Our immigration laws are important … but it’s also important that we administer these applications in an expeditious manner.”

Goodlatte, who voted for the reforms of ‘96 and still supports them, said applications for family members of U.S. citizens deserve high priority.

“This really is a genuine marriage,” he said. “This is the kind of thing these waivers were intended for.”

Kim said she never heard about the 10-year bar. If she had, she said, Rigo would not have gone to Mexico during the process.

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When her bus neared Mexico City in February, Kim pulled out her phone. Rigo said he’d be waiting. Peering out her window, she saw Rigo pacing on the platform.

“He was antsin’,” Kim remembered.

The couple traveled 44 miles to Tenancingo, where Rigo’s mother lives in a cement home with no running water, dirt floors and a blind rooster that crows every two hours.

Rigo’s return to Mexico rewound his life. A landscaper in the U.S., Rigo rediscovered the pittance earned for the same work in Mexico. The difference made him anxious. Waiting on paperwork depressed him, Rigo said by phone from Mexico.

His departure halved Kim’s household income to about $300 per week. Kim has two daughters from previous relationships, Alina, 14, and Autumn, 12, who said they recognize Rigo as a father. The daughters stay with Kim’s parents in Waynesboro — she frequently does, too — but the Romeros keep a King Avenue apartment so Rigo has a home to look forward to, she said.

And she still sends Rigo $50 every week to help pay for rent and food, and spends $5 daily for phone calls to Mexico. After initial reservations about Rigo, Kim’s parents said they help support the couple financially and by co-signing waiver applications.

Patty and Garry Fox, who work at local stores, said they bonded with Rigo at Christmas last year.

The Foxes see the immigration process like Kim: a mountain of paperwork congealed with the tears and anxiety that come with uncertain waiting.

The process is slow, arduous and expensive, Garry Fox said.

“I could go ahead and buy the world before he could get his papers and get back,” he said.

Still, they expect Rigo to return.

For Rigo, every trip to the American consulate in Ciudad Juarez is a 27-hour bus ride from his home. And when he and Kim left his mother’s house Feb. 18, both thought the tough part of their journey had ended, that he’d come home with her.

Thousands of cold metal chairs met them at the U.S. Consulate, Kim said, and they joined hundreds of people waiting under its tin roof. Two lists hung tacked to a window, Kim said. On one: hundreds of denials. On the other: a short list of those accepted into the U.S., people who could now travel a few miles north and live a different life.

The Romeros waited nine hours to get another denial.

“They only let three come across,” Rigo said by phone from Tenancingo. “To see that, I’m mad.”

Kim’s problem came into focus that day.

“I was always told if you’re married you can go to the border and bring them back,” Kim said. “But I had to leave him on the 20th of February. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”…

Leopold, the immigration attorney, said Kim faces an extremely cumbersome process and two-year timeline if all goes smoothly. Proving extreme hardship is a “very high standard,” he said.

Kim’s finances, family situation and health could help build a case to bring Rigo home.

“For a person to wade through the maze of documents and bureaucracies and laws and regulations is a daunting task to say the least,” Leopold said. “I can’t imagine somebody doing this without an attorney and doing it smoothly.”

Federal immigration Web sites present a black forest of policies, lists of immigration law sub-sections and hundreds of electronic files.

Kim said she once spoke with an attorney but received bad advice and hasn’t gone back for another consultation, in part because of finances. A brief description of Kim’s filings sounded to Leopold as though she’s on track.

“It’s like putting together a Rubik’s cube without the stickers,” said Black, the Romeros’ pastor.

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When he looks back on his pastoral advice to Rigo and Kim, Black said he can’t help but feel somewhat guilty. He watched Rigo grow spiritually, from the day of Kim’s baptism, when Rigo stood as far away as he could, to when he chose to officially join the church.

Black never expected Rigo to be gone so long, but he’s reminded of the absence when he sees Kim near the front row in church each weekend, he said.

“I feel bad for Kim,” Black said. “Because when I see her, I think, ‘I know I gave her the right advice, but that advice has a huge price.’”

“The grind of bureaucracy wears on her sometimes and it’s apparent,” said Tina Secrist, Kim’s manager at Sharp Shopper. “You can tell. Ninety percent of the time she has an upbeat attitude. And then you’ll catch the day where she gets some bad news.”

The Romeros’ marriage survives on pure hope and phone calls to Mexico.

Kim said she understands the darker, grimmer side of things, that much of her relationship with her husband exists in the stony, faceless entities that push his paperwork. Rejection takes its toll on Kim’s health, but also makes her stronger, she said.

“I’ve been diagnosed with depression and everything else,” she said. “Have somebody tell you ‘no’ seven days a week.”

Sometimes the biggest challenge for Kim comes at the end of the day, during her conversations with Rigo.

“On the 4th of February I’ll be in Mexico for a year — and if they don’t give it to me I’m going to get back another way,” Rigo said. “I have waited in Mexico for as long as they have said.”

Listening in to her husband on the phone, Kim winced at his promise. She shut her eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I support him because he’s my husband,” she said.

If Rigo did re-cross illegally, his chances of seeing his Mexican family would evaporate.“

Maybe, maybe not,” he said of seeing them. Then referring to a Hispanic term for illegal immigrants, he added, “The life of a mojado is death.”

The last time the Romeros saw each other was in June. Six months and counting.

Weary but hopeful, Kim plans to travel again to Mexico in February. She’ll take the $254 bus ride with the financial support and good will of her church and her family.

And as Rigo begins his travel to the platform to wait for his wife, 1,800 miles north, Kim Romero will once more climb aboard a southbound bus.