The Boston Phoenix October 12 - 19, 2000
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Catch-22
Illegal Colombian immigrants face deportation to a war-torn country. But they can't get amnesty because Colombia is a US ally in the war on drugs.
by Kristen Lombardi
The fear set in a decade ago. Lucas Cardona, then a community advocate in the Antioquia region of Colombia, awoke one day to find a note tucked under his front door. On it were scrawled two simple words that sent a chill up his spine: Beware, revolucionario. Cardona (not his real name) had been branded a traitor, accused of sympathizing with the wrong side in the complicated civil war that has raged in his country for nearly half a century.
Months after receiving the message, Cardona and his friend Luis headed to a popular night spot. As they waited in the packed lobby, Cardona noticed two men slowly cruising by on a motorcycle. Soon after, the festive ambiance of the evening was snuffed out by gunfire. Cardona felt the pain; he saw the blood. A bullet had ripped through his right thigh, and then pierced his left leg.
The attempt on his life left Cardona terrified that his attackers would return to finish the job. So he paid $2000 for a fake visa to work in the United States. He arrived in Boston 15 days later.
In the seven years since his desperate flight, Cardona, a 36-year-old illegal immigrant living in Chelsea, has fashioned a rather normal life for himself: he works as an artist in and around Boston; he met and settled down with his wife in this area (she is a Colombian immigrant with temporary protected status); they have a three-year-old son, Mitchell. To this day, however, Cardona is haunted by fear -- not of being killed, but of being sent back to a place where he will be.
"At first, I come here and think I'm lucky," he says. His friend Luis, he explains, was shot dead at close range just six months after Cardona left Colombia. "But," he adds, "I know it's hard to make a life without the amnesty. Amnesty is future for me, future without the fear."
The Colombian immigrant community, in general, consists of people like Cardona: young, educated men and women who could afford to flee the violence. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Colombians rank 11th among the top 15 groups of undocumented immigrants. (Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans are listed as the top three.) It's almost impossible to determine how many live in Massachusetts. Using figures from the 1990 US Census, the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Health at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health estimates that 27,500 Colombian immigrants live in the Bay State -- most in East Boston, Brighton, Lowell, and Chelsea. But that number probably doesn't include all those who are here illegally.
Given the conditions in Colombia -- where 200 people are kidnapped every month, 3000 are murdered every year, and more than 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes by political violence -- you might expect Cardona to receive amnesty. He thought the same thing in 1993, when he applied for political asylum. But although his life remained in jeopardy, his application was denied. "It's very hard for Colombians to be defined as political refugees in the United States," he says.
Immigrant profiles
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Nelson Camabarel: home at last
Walter Giron: living in exile
That's because the US government has aligned itself with the Colombian government in its fight against Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers. Colombia, in other words, is a democratic ally. For the US to regard Colombian immigrants as political refugees, it would have to acknowledge that their homeland's government is a repressive regime -- an inconvenient detail that gets in the way of America's war on drugs.
A bill filed in August 1999 by US Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Florida) would offer relief to Cardona and the 60,000 others like him now living in the US. The Andean Adjustment Act of 1999 -- HR 2741 --would protect the tens of thousands of Colombians (and at least 20,000 Peruvians) who arrived in this country before December 1995 by granting them permanent-resident status. As Martha Soto of the Cambridge-based advocacy group Colombia Vivé explains, "The amnesty bill is a first step toward forcing politicians to recognize the plight of Colombian immigrants."
The prospect of ending their daily nightmare has sparked unparalleled activism among this long-silent and isolated immigrant population. Colombians have taken to the streets in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami to voice support for HR 2741. An October 14 rally for amnesty at the United Nations in New York is expected to attract 5000 immigrants, including many Colombians. In Massachusetts, they are blanketing Greater Boston in an attempt to mobilize fellow immigrants, many of whom fear taking direct political action because, in their home countries, speaking out often means putting your life at risk.
Despite their lack of political clout, these advocates have managed to gain attention -- at least in Massachusetts. Seven of the state's 10 congressmen have signed on to HR 2741 as co-sponsors. US Representative Michael Capuano (D-Boston), for one, maintains that politics never factored into his decision to champion the legislation. After all, he says, "most of these immigrants cannot vote." For Capuano, HR 2741 amounts to what he calls "basic fairness." There is no doubt that Colombians have left their homeland because of persecution, violence, and strife -- the very conditions bringing countless political refugees to the US. "Immigration law must be fair," he says. "We should not be treating immigrant groups differently."
Ultimately, though, HR 2741 is about much more than basic fairness. After struggling to come to this country -- fleeing political violence at home that is perpetuated by the US -- Colombians continue to struggle for legal protection here. Theirs, then, is a fight for the right to live.
Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.
