Opinion - Columns - Bill Morem

Published: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009

Bill Morem: Nipomo man caught in a Kafka-like nightmare

Comments (0) |

If you’re of a certain age and read Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” in the comic strips, you may recall a character named Joe Btfsplk, a sweet guy who was so jinxed that he perpetually walked around with a dark cloud over his head.

Well, I think I met the real-life Mr. Btfsplk this week. His name is John Alberto De Sousa, and he’s a longtime Nipomo resident who’s been caught in the cogs of the Homeland Security bureaucratic machine.

Here’s his story.

John was born 57 years ago in the Portuguese Azores and christened Joao Alberto De Sousa Pimentel. The name is full of vowels and unusual, so when Joao immigrated with his family to New Bedford, Mass., in 1966, he became known as John.

He spent the remainder of his teen years in New Bedford, graduated from high school there, applied for and received a Permanent Resident Card — or “green card” — and took all of the necessary steps to become an American citizen.

To that end, he passed his citizenship test and then enlisted in the U.S. Army. It was late 1976.

Upon being sworn into the Army, his commanding officer told him that he wouldn’t need his green card anymore, now that he was in the Army, and cut his card in half.

As it turns out, what the commanding officer said wasn’t true.

Meanwhile, the Immigration and Naturalization Service sent a certified letter to De Sousa’s old address on May 2, 1977, informing him that his citizenship would be denied if he didn’t attend a swearing-in ceremony in June of that year.

John was now well into his first two stints in Korea and never got the letter. Adding injury to insult, John permanently blew out a knee while training to become a member of the elite Army Airborne. He was discharged from the service in 1981.

Fast forward to 2003. In applying for Veteran’s Disability for his deteriorating knee, he found that he wasn’t a citizen — something he’d believed he was for the previous 30-plus years.

Rep. Lois Capps got him an appointment with the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees immigration matters) in Los Angeles.

When the agent asked if John had lost weight and remarked that he really looked good for his age, he realized the agency had his father’s file, not his. They told him to come back a month later.

The bottom line, they told him, was that the case was so old, he’d have to start the citizenship process over from square one. They sent him a little brochure on how to apply.

In the interim, he applied for a new green card, filling out forms, getting fingerprinted and photographed by the FBI and sending in various filing fees.

Meanwhile, his mother died in June 2008, and John had to go back to the Azores to settle her estate, yet he couldn’t get his green card until he showed Homeland Security his Portuguese passport.

So John and his fiancée, Linda Harrison, went to the Portuguese Consulate in San Francisco for his birth certificate and passport. By this time, the couple had spent about $3,000 in travel, fees and hotels.

Now, although he could leave the country with his Portuguese passport, he needed a stamp from Homeland Security that would allow him back into the United States. Driving to L.A. once again to get the stamp, he was told by a bureaucrat that he could leave the country but didn’t have to come back. “That attitude blew my socks off,” says Linda.

While all of this was going on, the government said it was expediting his green card replacement. That was November 2008. That expeditious ability translated into the card arriving last week, and his name is misspelled — which makes the card worthless.

When the couple contacted Homeland Security about the error, a bureaucrat told them, “Homeland Security doesn’t make mistakes” and that they probably couldn’t read the writing on John’s birth certificate. (I’ve seen his birth certificate; there’s no mistaking the correct spelling.)

The bureaucrat then suggested they fill out another set of forms and start a new process.

Maddeningly Kafkaesque.

Here’s the bottom line: John De Sousa has been a good, honest and earnest individual in pursuit of his citizenship. A homeowner and taxpayer, he’s a decorated, disabled American vet who has served his country through the military and the sweat of his brow. And this is how our government rewards such an individual?

John De Sousa may share Joe Btfsplk’s dark cloud of jinx hanging over his head, but the treatment he’s received from the government he’s served so well is no laughing matter.

Bill Morem can be reached at bmorem@thetribunenews.com or 781-7852.