Angela Guerrero knew she might be overwhelmed for a few weeks, possibly a month, juggling work, child care and the daily grind of family life when her husband set out for the U.S. consulate offices in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
She never expected to be in the predicament she is in — her husband of five years banned from this country for at least a decade, her family torn between two countries and a tangle of immigration issues to unsnarl.
Ricardo Guerrero, an illegal immigrant, had tired of looking over his shoulder, constantly wondering whether deportation was just a misstep away.
So one February day, Guerrero kissed his family goodbye in Durham. Eager to stop living on the fringes of the law, as many illegal immigrants do, he flew to his native Mexico with papers a Wake County notary public had helped him prepare and a two-page letter from his American-born wife.
His optimistic plan was to return with a green card, the official document that would give him better access to the jobs and education he dreamed of when he came to this country nine years ago in search of a better life.
But those hopes were dashed by what immigration lawyers say is a sweeping problem — notaries who are unauthorized and unlicensed to practice law overstepping their bounds and giving bad advice about immigration laws and procedures.
Got that? It is not Guerrero’s fault for coming to the US illegally, for sticking around and starting a family, then getting caught in Mexico. No, it is the fault of the notaries.
You know, I am not completely unsympathetic to the plight of these illegals with families, not that many of them come to the USA looking for work and a better life. But, stories like this one does not endear the illegals to the American population. Matter of fact, stories like this one probably have the opposite effect, where the reader goes “ta hell with them, they should have come here legally.” Maybe if the sob stories were put aside, if the illegals learned English and tried to fit into the American culture, rather then remaining seperate, this backlash might not have occured.
