Here's how Shrub and VP Haliburton, two men who acted like cowards when called to serve, are mistreating our troops and their families. I'm sure there's plenty of similiar cases out there. It's repulsive.
January 15, 2005
Fighting for U.S., and for Citizenship
By NINA BERNSTEIN
ladislav Kolesnikov was 12 when he came to America, and only 17 in 2003, when he enlisted in the United States Navy just in time to serve in the start of the Iraq war. He was eager to protect the country that had given his family refuge from persecution in Russia, he said, and grateful for government aid to his mother, who is paralyzed by multiple sclerosis.
The Navy was happy to accept his service, which made him eligible for a fast track to citizenship and all its benefits. But after his ship returned to its base in Norfolk, Va., the sailor, now 19, learned that the government was far less eager to help refugees it was not trying to recruit. Back home in Brooklyn, his mother and grandmother had been cut from their disability payments, solely because they - like him - are not yet citizens.
"All I want to do is help them out," Seaman Kolesnikov said in a recent call from his ship, the Nashville, after visiting his sick mother and 65-year-old grandmother, who have had to go on public assistance and are unable to cover food and rent without loans. "I'm doing everything for this country, but this country doesn't want to help me."
The Bush administration has established a fast track to naturalization as a way to enlist and reward people like Seaman Kolesnikov, one of 32,000 noncitizens now serving in the wartime military. But other refugees get no such favors. Congress gave refugees arriving after Aug. 22, 1996, seven years to become naturalized or lose their disability benefits, and many are missing the deadline, caught up in a nationwide backlog of immigration paperwork.
The difference in treatment between immigrants who serve the government's needs and those who need its help reflects a longstanding and growing tension at the heart of United States immigration policy, authorities on immigration say. For decades after World War II, immigration laws gave priority to family ties, regardless of age or disability, and lawmakers showcased programs for refugees, especially from Communist countries. Increasingly since the early 1990's, the focus has shifted to making immigration fill the nation's occupational needs.
Now public debate swirls around the economic costs and benefits of importing guest workers, nurses or more foreign graduate students. But refugees do not fit that kind of balance sheet, said Leonard S. Glickman, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, one of the nation's oldest migrant aid organizations.
"This country does not admit refugees for their résumés," said Mr. Glickman, whose agency, founded in 19th-century New York to help Jews fleeing the pogroms of czarist Russia, is one of several trying to help families like the sailor's. "A refugee is here just because of humanitarian needs and the protection of the United States."
In a windswept low-income housing project in Brighton Beach, the sailor's grandmother, Mina Gorenshteyn, remains unshakably grateful for that protection, despite her financial straits.
"God bless America," she said in heavily accented English, putting a hand on her heart. She gestured at the special equipment, adult diapers and hospital-style bed provided by Medicaid for the care of her daughter, Viktoriya Khudaya, 42, who can no longer speak.
Vladislav Kolesnikov was only 5 and his sister, Elizabeth 7 when their mother became ill and their father left them in North Ossetia, a region now known for the schoolhouse hostage siege in which hundreds died. It was their grandmother, working three jobs as a bookkeeper, who supported the family, they said, and who eventually determined that they should flee the province's resurgent anti-Semitism.
Refugees are eligible to apply for green cards a year after their arrival, and for citizenship five years after they obtain lawful permanent residence. But even though the four all applied for green cards in 1998, as soon as the law allowed, so far only Elizabeth, now a 22-year-old nursing student, has managed to become a citizen.
"I got lucky," she said.
In Ms. Khudaya's case, a green card interview was delayed for years because her illness kept her from going to 26 Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan for fingerprinting. Though the rules allow for a home visit by an immigration officer in such circumstances, the visit was not scheduled until last February, even after her congressman, Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, intervened on her behalf in October 2002.
She was finally approved for a green card last summer, but it never arrived. Aides to Mr. Nadler said they eventually determined that the card had been mailed to the wrong address. In October, when her seven-year limit ran out, Ms. Khudaya's disability benefits stopped. So did old-age benefits for Ms. Gorenshteyn, who has received her green card, but is still waiting for naturalization as she struggles to learn English and to care for her daughter with the help of a home attendant.
"It's crazy," Mr. Nadler said. "We certainly should not have a seven-year automatic cutoff, no matter what. The bigger picture is that there's a shortage of funding to do the job right, and the people who get hurt are the people who end up waiting, not the bureaucrats."
Mr. Glickman, formerly a top career officer in charge of government refugee programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the problem could be traced to decisions made during the 1996 welfare overhaul, which for the first time in the nation's history restricted many benefits to citizens alone.
At the time, he said, he opposed any Congressional time limits on Supplemental Security Income, or S.S.I., for elderly and disabled refugees. But to cut costs, Congress proposed a five-year limit, and the Clinton administration compromised on seven, considered long enough for refugees to naturalize. The new restrictions led to a surge in citizenship applications, and to backlogs compounded by security measures adopted after Sept. 11, 2001.
To historians of immigration, the problem of unintended consequences is familiar. "It's not just this case or that case, because nobody ever sat down and figured this thing out," said Roger Daniels, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. "It's add on here, take off there."
The battle between economic and humanitarian approaches to immigration also has a long history, said David Reimers, an emeritus historian of immigration at New York University, but there is more overlap than politicians like to acknowledge. Even if they are admitted as refugees or temporary workers, newcomers tend to start chains of family immigration, he said, and - as Ms. Gorenshteyn's grandchildren demonstrate - refugee families may produce the workers society demands.
A fast track for those deemed more desirable or deserving only compounds the problem for everybody else, contends Inna Stavitsky, a caseworker with the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, which is trying to help the seaman's grandmother become a citizen.
"They did not add resources to handle applications, so it's giving advantages to one group at the expense of the others," Ms. Stavitsky said.
For years, Seaman Kolesnikov himself has been caught in the backlog. Even as he served on a ship carrying marines to a war zone, immigration officials were waiting for security clearance of his fingerprints before scheduling a green card interview, counselors at HIAS said. Last month, Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, recommended that the sailor drop his stalled application and apply directly for expedited citizenship based on his wartime service.
But when aides to Mr. Nadler tried to pursue the suggestion, they said, officials at the Nebraska Service Center who process the military applications insisted that Mr. Bentley was wrong: Even those in the service need a green card before they can enter the fast track to naturalization, unless they are killed in combat and awarded citizenship posthumously.
All the inquiries suddenly bore fruit after authorities realized that the case would be the subject of an article in The New York Times. Seaman Kolesnikov was summoned for a green card interview at 26 Federal Plaza on Monday and approved on the spot. But the change in the sailor's status does not help the two women he refers to as his parents.
"Even if I get my green card, my parents are still going to be cut off of everything," he said. "My mother right now, she's very sick, even worse than when I left. And now they get all their stuff cut off just because they're not citizens. I don't think that's fair."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Full Version: Mistreatment of Troops and Their Families...
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > U.S. Military Issues > U.S. Military Issues Archive
are there more stories out there about how our govt is treating our vets and their families? any troops and/or families who'd like to share their stories? hasn't been too widely reported by our wimps in the media.
Check mfso.org for more stories.
QUOTE(teacher731 @ Jan 15 2005, 09:50 AM)
Here's how Shrub and VP Haliburton, two men who acted like cowards when called to serve, are mistreating our troops and their families. I'm sure there's plenty of similiar cases out there. It's repulsive.
January 15, 2005
Fighting for U.S., and for Citizenship
By NINA BERNSTEIN
ladislav Kolesnikov was 12 when he came to America, and only 17 in 2003, when he enlisted in the United States Navy just in time to serve in the start of the Iraq war. He was eager to protect the country that had given his family refuge from persecution in Russia, he said, and grateful for government aid to his mother, who is paralyzed by multiple sclerosis.
The Navy was happy to accept his service, which made him eligible for a fast track to citizenship and all its benefits. But after his ship returned to its base in Norfolk, Va., the sailor, now 19, learned that the government was far less eager to help refugees it was not trying to recruit. Back home in Brooklyn, his mother and grandmother had been cut from their disability payments, solely because they - like him - are not yet citizens.
"All I want to do is help them out," Seaman Kolesnikov said in a recent call from his ship, the Nashville, after visiting his sick mother and 65-year-old grandmother, who have had to go on public assistance and are unable to cover food and rent without loans. "I'm doing everything for this country, but this country doesn't want to help me."
The Bush administration has established a fast track to naturalization as a way to enlist and reward people like Seaman Kolesnikov, one of 32,000 noncitizens now serving in the wartime military. But other refugees get no such favors. Congress gave refugees arriving after Aug. 22, 1996, seven years to become naturalized or lose their disability benefits, and many are missing the deadline, caught up in a nationwide backlog of immigration paperwork.
The difference in treatment between immigrants who serve the government's needs and those who need its help reflects a longstanding and growing tension at the heart of United States immigration policy, authorities on immigration say. For decades after World War II, immigration laws gave priority to family ties, regardless of age or disability, and lawmakers showcased programs for refugees, especially from Communist countries. Increasingly since the early 1990's, the focus has shifted to making immigration fill the nation's occupational needs.
Now public debate swirls around the economic costs and benefits of importing guest workers, nurses or more foreign graduate students. But refugees do not fit that kind of balance sheet, said Leonard S. Glickman, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, one of the nation's oldest migrant aid organizations.
"This country does not admit refugees for their résumés," said Mr. Glickman, whose agency, founded in 19th-century New York to help Jews fleeing the pogroms of czarist Russia, is one of several trying to help families like the sailor's. "A refugee is here just because of humanitarian needs and the protection of the United States."
In a windswept low-income housing project in Brighton Beach, the sailor's grandmother, Mina Gorenshteyn, remains unshakably grateful for that protection, despite her financial straits.
"God bless America," she said in heavily accented English, putting a hand on her heart. She gestured at the special equipment, adult diapers and hospital-style bed provided by Medicaid for the care of her daughter, Viktoriya Khudaya, 42, who can no longer speak.
Vladislav Kolesnikov was only 5 and his sister, Elizabeth 7 when their mother became ill and their father left them in North Ossetia, a region now known for the schoolhouse hostage siege in which hundreds died. It was their grandmother, working three jobs as a bookkeeper, who supported the family, they said, and who eventually determined that they should flee the province's resurgent anti-Semitism.
Refugees are eligible to apply for green cards a year after their arrival, and for citizenship five years after they obtain lawful permanent residence. But even though the four all applied for green cards in 1998, as soon as the law allowed, so far only Elizabeth, now a 22-year-old nursing student, has managed to become a citizen.
"I got lucky," she said.
In Ms. Khudaya's case, a green card interview was delayed for years because her illness kept her from going to 26 Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan for fingerprinting. Though the rules allow for a home visit by an immigration officer in such circumstances, the visit was not scheduled until last February, even after her congressman, Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, intervened on her behalf in October 2002.
She was finally approved for a green card last summer, but it never arrived. Aides to Mr. Nadler said they eventually determined that the card had been mailed to the wrong address. In October, when her seven-year limit ran out, Ms. Khudaya's disability benefits stopped. So did old-age benefits for Ms. Gorenshteyn, who has received her green card, but is still waiting for naturalization as she struggles to learn English and to care for her daughter with the help of a home attendant.
"It's crazy," Mr. Nadler said. "We certainly should not have a seven-year automatic cutoff, no matter what. The bigger picture is that there's a shortage of funding to do the job right, and the people who get hurt are the people who end up waiting, not the bureaucrats."
Mr. Glickman, formerly a top career officer in charge of government refugee programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the problem could be traced to decisions made during the 1996 welfare overhaul, which for the first time in the nation's history restricted many benefits to citizens alone.
At the time, he said, he opposed any Congressional time limits on Supplemental Security Income, or S.S.I., for elderly and disabled refugees. But to cut costs, Congress proposed a five-year limit, and the Clinton administration compromised on seven, considered long enough for refugees to naturalize. The new restrictions led to a surge in citizenship applications, and to backlogs compounded by security measures adopted after Sept. 11, 2001.
To historians of immigration, the problem of unintended consequences is familiar. "It's not just this case or that case, because nobody ever sat down and figured this thing out," said Roger Daniels, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. "It's add on here, take off there."
The battle between economic and humanitarian approaches to immigration also has a long history, said David Reimers, an emeritus historian of immigration at New York University, but there is more overlap than politicians like to acknowledge. Even if they are admitted as refugees or temporary workers, newcomers tend to start chains of family immigration, he said, and - as Ms. Gorenshteyn's grandchildren demonstrate - refugee families may produce the workers society demands.
A fast track for those deemed more desirable or deserving only compounds the problem for everybody else, contends Inna Stavitsky, a caseworker with the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, which is trying to help the seaman's grandmother become a citizen.
"They did not add resources to handle applications, so it's giving advantages to one group at the expense of the others," Ms. Stavitsky said.
For years, Seaman Kolesnikov himself has been caught in the backlog. Even as he served on a ship carrying marines to a war zone, immigration officials were waiting for security clearance of his fingerprints before scheduling a green card interview, counselors at HIAS said. Last month, Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, recommended that the sailor drop his stalled application and apply directly for expedited citizenship based on his wartime service.
But when aides to Mr. Nadler tried to pursue the suggestion, they said, officials at the Nebraska Service Center who process the military applications insisted that Mr. Bentley was wrong: Even those in the service need a green card before they can enter the fast track to naturalization, unless they are killed in combat and awarded citizenship posthumously.
All the inquiries suddenly bore fruit after authorities realized that the case would be the subject of an article in The New York Times. Seaman Kolesnikov was summoned for a green card interview at 26 Federal Plaza on Monday and approved on the spot. But the change in the sailor's status does not help the two women he refers to as his parents.
"Even if I get my green card, my parents are still going to be cut off of everything," he said. "My mother right now, she's very sick, even worse than when I left. And now they get all their stuff cut off just because they're not citizens. I don't think that's fair."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
January 15, 2005
Fighting for U.S., and for Citizenship
By NINA BERNSTEIN
ladislav Kolesnikov was 12 when he came to America, and only 17 in 2003, when he enlisted in the United States Navy just in time to serve in the start of the Iraq war. He was eager to protect the country that had given his family refuge from persecution in Russia, he said, and grateful for government aid to his mother, who is paralyzed by multiple sclerosis.
The Navy was happy to accept his service, which made him eligible for a fast track to citizenship and all its benefits. But after his ship returned to its base in Norfolk, Va., the sailor, now 19, learned that the government was far less eager to help refugees it was not trying to recruit. Back home in Brooklyn, his mother and grandmother had been cut from their disability payments, solely because they - like him - are not yet citizens.
"All I want to do is help them out," Seaman Kolesnikov said in a recent call from his ship, the Nashville, after visiting his sick mother and 65-year-old grandmother, who have had to go on public assistance and are unable to cover food and rent without loans. "I'm doing everything for this country, but this country doesn't want to help me."
The Bush administration has established a fast track to naturalization as a way to enlist and reward people like Seaman Kolesnikov, one of 32,000 noncitizens now serving in the wartime military. But other refugees get no such favors. Congress gave refugees arriving after Aug. 22, 1996, seven years to become naturalized or lose their disability benefits, and many are missing the deadline, caught up in a nationwide backlog of immigration paperwork.
The difference in treatment between immigrants who serve the government's needs and those who need its help reflects a longstanding and growing tension at the heart of United States immigration policy, authorities on immigration say. For decades after World War II, immigration laws gave priority to family ties, regardless of age or disability, and lawmakers showcased programs for refugees, especially from Communist countries. Increasingly since the early 1990's, the focus has shifted to making immigration fill the nation's occupational needs.
Now public debate swirls around the economic costs and benefits of importing guest workers, nurses or more foreign graduate students. But refugees do not fit that kind of balance sheet, said Leonard S. Glickman, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, one of the nation's oldest migrant aid organizations.
"This country does not admit refugees for their résumés," said Mr. Glickman, whose agency, founded in 19th-century New York to help Jews fleeing the pogroms of czarist Russia, is one of several trying to help families like the sailor's. "A refugee is here just because of humanitarian needs and the protection of the United States."
In a windswept low-income housing project in Brighton Beach, the sailor's grandmother, Mina Gorenshteyn, remains unshakably grateful for that protection, despite her financial straits.
"God bless America," she said in heavily accented English, putting a hand on her heart. She gestured at the special equipment, adult diapers and hospital-style bed provided by Medicaid for the care of her daughter, Viktoriya Khudaya, 42, who can no longer speak.
Vladislav Kolesnikov was only 5 and his sister, Elizabeth 7 when their mother became ill and their father left them in North Ossetia, a region now known for the schoolhouse hostage siege in which hundreds died. It was their grandmother, working three jobs as a bookkeeper, who supported the family, they said, and who eventually determined that they should flee the province's resurgent anti-Semitism.
Refugees are eligible to apply for green cards a year after their arrival, and for citizenship five years after they obtain lawful permanent residence. But even though the four all applied for green cards in 1998, as soon as the law allowed, so far only Elizabeth, now a 22-year-old nursing student, has managed to become a citizen.
"I got lucky," she said.
In Ms. Khudaya's case, a green card interview was delayed for years because her illness kept her from going to 26 Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan for fingerprinting. Though the rules allow for a home visit by an immigration officer in such circumstances, the visit was not scheduled until last February, even after her congressman, Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, intervened on her behalf in October 2002.
She was finally approved for a green card last summer, but it never arrived. Aides to Mr. Nadler said they eventually determined that the card had been mailed to the wrong address. In October, when her seven-year limit ran out, Ms. Khudaya's disability benefits stopped. So did old-age benefits for Ms. Gorenshteyn, who has received her green card, but is still waiting for naturalization as she struggles to learn English and to care for her daughter with the help of a home attendant.
"It's crazy," Mr. Nadler said. "We certainly should not have a seven-year automatic cutoff, no matter what. The bigger picture is that there's a shortage of funding to do the job right, and the people who get hurt are the people who end up waiting, not the bureaucrats."
Mr. Glickman, formerly a top career officer in charge of government refugee programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the problem could be traced to decisions made during the 1996 welfare overhaul, which for the first time in the nation's history restricted many benefits to citizens alone.
At the time, he said, he opposed any Congressional time limits on Supplemental Security Income, or S.S.I., for elderly and disabled refugees. But to cut costs, Congress proposed a five-year limit, and the Clinton administration compromised on seven, considered long enough for refugees to naturalize. The new restrictions led to a surge in citizenship applications, and to backlogs compounded by security measures adopted after Sept. 11, 2001.
To historians of immigration, the problem of unintended consequences is familiar. "It's not just this case or that case, because nobody ever sat down and figured this thing out," said Roger Daniels, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. "It's add on here, take off there."
The battle between economic and humanitarian approaches to immigration also has a long history, said David Reimers, an emeritus historian of immigration at New York University, but there is more overlap than politicians like to acknowledge. Even if they are admitted as refugees or temporary workers, newcomers tend to start chains of family immigration, he said, and - as Ms. Gorenshteyn's grandchildren demonstrate - refugee families may produce the workers society demands.
A fast track for those deemed more desirable or deserving only compounds the problem for everybody else, contends Inna Stavitsky, a caseworker with the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, which is trying to help the seaman's grandmother become a citizen.
"They did not add resources to handle applications, so it's giving advantages to one group at the expense of the others," Ms. Stavitsky said.
For years, Seaman Kolesnikov himself has been caught in the backlog. Even as he served on a ship carrying marines to a war zone, immigration officials were waiting for security clearance of his fingerprints before scheduling a green card interview, counselors at HIAS said. Last month, Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, recommended that the sailor drop his stalled application and apply directly for expedited citizenship based on his wartime service.
But when aides to Mr. Nadler tried to pursue the suggestion, they said, officials at the Nebraska Service Center who process the military applications insisted that Mr. Bentley was wrong: Even those in the service need a green card before they can enter the fast track to naturalization, unless they are killed in combat and awarded citizenship posthumously.
All the inquiries suddenly bore fruit after authorities realized that the case would be the subject of an article in The New York Times. Seaman Kolesnikov was summoned for a green card interview at 26 Federal Plaza on Monday and approved on the spot. But the change in the sailor's status does not help the two women he refers to as his parents.
"Even if I get my green card, my parents are still going to be cut off of everything," he said. "My mother right now, she's very sick, even worse than when I left. And now they get all their stuff cut off just because they're not citizens. I don't think that's fair."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Maybe the sailor should contact this advocacy center because when I go to the summary of the laws inacted by the legislators of the big blue State of New York I see these people should be receiving the state administered public assistance.
http://www.wnylc.net/web/welfare-law/alien-provisions.htm
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