Am I a US Citizen??

[dnoblett]

I saw this one in the news the other day, this guy entered the USA Legally from Cuba with parents when he was age 9 or so and has always assumed he was conferred citizenship from the special circumstance of refugee status from Cuba. He has held several government jobs, and served in the military, even voted in elections going back to the Carter years, Only now when wanting to go on a Cruse after retiring he runs into this issue when trying to get a US Passport for travel.

 

I guess no one told him or his family needed to apply for green-cards (Adjust Status I-485), and 5 years after getting the cards file N-400 to naturalize.

 

I am amazed that the military, and various government jobs he held did not catch his non resident status. I believe he could have even applied for citizenship based on military service, but then again that may still need to have a green-card while in the military. USCIS shows Lawful Permanent Resident Status as a requirement for Military Naturalization. http://www.uscis.gov/news/fact-sheets/naturalization-through-military-service-fact-sheet

 

Now he is in hot water for voting when not a citizen, this is one of the reasons why many states are trying to require ID and/or prof of citizenship to vote. I wonder how many more non-citizens have been voting in elections without even knowing that they are in fact not citizens?

 

 

After Forming Deep Roots in U.S., Man Discovers He Isn’t a Citizen

 

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/mario-hernandez-e1400206782329.jpg

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — After living nearly a half century in the United States — marrying and raising a family here, paying taxes and working for decades for the federal government — Mario Hernandez made a discovery recently that rattled him to his core: He is not an American citizen. In fact, he is not even a United States resident.

 

Nobody had ever told him. Not his mother or his grandparents. Not the United States Army, where he served for three years in the 1970s. Not the election supervisors in four states who tallied his votes in every major election since Jimmy Carter won the White House. Not the two state agencies where he was employed, one in Washington State and the other in Florida. And not the two federal agencies, including the Justice Department, where he spent most of his career as a prison supervisor handling notorious inmates and undergoing thorough background checks every five years. Citizenship is a requirement for the job.

 

The revelation came only after Mr. Hernandez and his wife, Bonita, started planning a trip to celebrate his recent retirement from the Bureau of Prisons after 22 years. The two had settled on a Caribbean cruise, which would have been Mr. Hernandez’s first time out of the country since arriving in 1965 as a Cuban refugee. On a cruise line website, he found out that a United States passport was a requirement. He did not have one and wondered whether he even had naturalization papers.

 

....

By all accounts, Mr. Hernandez is a make-the-best-of-it kind of man who was taught to be self-reliant at an early age. But he is unnerved by the turn of events.

“It’s like I’m living a bad dream,” he said as he sat in his comfortable home decorated with Holstein cow knickknacks and dozens of framed photographs of his children and grandchildren. “This cannot be real; I’ve been living here 49 years. This is the only country I’ve ever known.”

 

Elizabeth C. Pines, a longtime immigration lawyer in Miami, said she had run across a handful of similar cases but none as extreme as this one.

“It goes to show you how broken the system is for a federal and a state agency to have not even checked his background — his criminal background, yes, but not his immigration background,” she said.

 

The only immigration document Mr. Hernandez has is a parole document, which he received as a 9-year-old when he arrived at Miami’s Freedom Tower with his family. The paper allowed him to remain in the United States indefinitely.

 

Cuban citizens are granted special immigration privileges when they flee Cuba and arrive in the United States. First, they are granted parole. After a year, unless they are criminals, they can become United States residents. Five years later, they can become American citizens. The only hitch is that the paperwork must be filed, which Mr. Hernandez’s parents never did on his behalf.

 

Growing up in Fullerton, Calif., Mr. Hernandez always assumed that all of this had been done for him as a child. Nobody ever mentioned his immigration status at home — less a topic of conversation in those days, particularly for Cuban refugees, Mr. Hernandez said. He never thought to ask, he added.

 

Jobs came easily. As a parolee, Mr. Hernandez says, he was given an unrestricted Social Security number, which he has had since childhood. Later, he got a driver’s license.

 

When he enlisted in the Army in 1975 as a teenager, he said he remembered, he handed officials his parole document and taking some kind of oath. That he may not have been an American citizen crossed his mind then, he said, but the oath he took — a citizenship oath, in his mind — allayed any doubts.

 

Decades later, worried about his lack of citizenship papers, Mr. Hernandez met with Ms. Ricci. Ms. Ricci said she was stunned at how long he had lived in limbo. She said she was baffled why the Bureau of Prisons had never flagged his lack of citizenship, particularly since Mr. Hernandez did the opposite of remain in the shadows.

“It’s a classic example of government inefficiency,” said Ms. Ricci, who has taken his case pro bono.

 

MORE..

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/us/after-forming-deep-roots-in-us-man-discovers-he-isnt-a-citizen.html?hp

 

 

[Greg.D.]

....

When he enlisted in the Army in 1975 as a teenager, he said he remembered, he handed officials his parole document and taking some kind of oath. That he may not have been an American citizen crossed his mind then, he said, but the oath he took — a citizenship oath, in his mind — allayed any doubts.

.....

I am very sympathetic to the guy's situation - and I believe he will get everything straightened out. Probably, when he brought his 10 yr old parole paper to enlist in the army, he should have known something wasn't right and looked into it then. Or, could have. I don't think he took "a citizenship oath" at that time.

 

I hope he clears up the mess.

 

Greg

[dnoblett]

 

....

When he enlisted in the Army in 1975 as a teenager, he said he remembered, he handed officials his parole document and taking some kind of oath. That he may not have been an American citizen crossed his mind then, he said, but the oath he took — a citizenship oath, in his mind — allayed any doubts.

.....

I am very sympathetic to the guy's situation - and I believe he will get everything straightened out. Probably, when he brought his 10 yr old parole paper to enlist in the army, he should have known something wasn't right and looked into it then. Or, could have. I don't think he took "a citizenship oath" at that time.

 

I hope he clears up the mess.

 

Greg

 

Here was the point where he should have been made aware something was not right, the recruiting officer for the military should have asked for evidence of citizenship or residency (Birth Cert or Naturalization Cert, or Green-Card) at this point being unable to produce one of these would have forced him to look into what to do, and at that point started the process of adjustment of status, and once having a green-card only then should the military have allowed him to enlist. That should have been his wake up call.

[amberjack1234]

All they cared about in those days was filling their enlistment quotas. I know all about that. As for the oath the best that I remember it was an oath to protect and defend the United States both foreign and domestic against all enemies or something like that. It is an oath that binds your contract to the military and not a citizenship oath. Some one that can remember back that far may be able to remember it more clearly. I went in the military in 1968 so my memory is a little fuzzy on that.

 

I was in basic training with a guy that came from Puerto Rico and he could BARELY speak english. We went on to spend three years together. He gave me Spanish lessons and I helped him with his English and even taught his wife how to drive a car.

 

As far as this guy is concerned for my part he should be granted immediate citizenship after all we dropped the ball in so many ways and opportunities and he never had a clue.

 

I wish him the best of luck.

 

Larry

[warpedbored]

I have to call bullshit Dan. This has nothing to do with voter ID laws. It was an honest mistake. Voter ID laws don't require a passport or proof of citizenship. They only require a legal ID which any legal resident can get.

[Mick]

I guess the thing that amazes me most about this is the fact that it is not at all unusual. I lived 15 years in Miami, the Cuban capital of the U.S., and worked closely with Dade County social service agencies in attaining grant monies for various projects. I can recall numerous cases where immigrants thought they were citizens, only to discover years later that they were not. It was no big deal and there were even a couple of NGOs that were formed to streamline the process of helping folks that fell into this category obtain the necessary documentation needed to become citizens. I guess outside Dade County this may seem unusual, but for Dade, it was fairly commonplace. It always amazed me that folks didn't know what they needed to do after coming ashore under the "wet foot/dry foot" laws. The Cuban community was and is tight knit and knowledge of the ins and outs of the immigration laws for Cubans are common knowledge. My ex-wife is Cuban and I was immersed in that culture for many years.

 

Now that I have been married to a Chinese for almost seventeen years, it caused one of my old college buddies to say a few weeks ago: "What is with you and Communist women, anyway?"

[Randy W]

Man Who Thought He Was a Citizen Makes It Official

 

A Cuban refugee who arrived here as a child, Mr. Hernandez was given open-ended parole, which allowed him to live and work in the United States but did not make him a resident. He said he had assumed that his parents filed the paperwork to make him a resident and a citizen. When he enlisted in the Army in 1975, Mr. Hernandez said he was given what he thought was a citizenship oath.

 

. . .

 

In March, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services denied his case, even though Mr. Hernandez was entitled to citizenship because he had served during the Vietnam War era.

In a statement, Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the immigration agency, said it apologized for handling Mr. Hernandez’s application as a regular naturalization case rather than a military one.

 

“As soon as this error was brought to our attention, we immediately reopened the case,” Mr. Bentley said, “and this morning, after a thorough review of the case with Mr. Hernandez, we were able to approve his naturalization application.”