A flat tyre lands Indian businesswoman without proper documents
in US may be deported


CHICAGO, December 6 2004
IANS

An Indian businesswoman who sought police help after she got a flat tyre on the highway is now in jail here awaiting deportation to India.

Thirty-one-year-old Terwinder Singh, who had entered the United States without proper documents 12 years ago for an arranged marriage, is reportedly being treated like a fugitive by the US authorities.

When Terwinder, a mother of two from Wisconsin, appealed for help after she got a flat tyre, police started checking her records as part of routine. They discovered that immigration officials had wanted her detained more than five years ago.

Her appeal against the order has been hanging fire since 1998. She had been served an order to depart voluntarily, at her own expense, by March 2002.

Why Terwinder ignored the order isn't clear, but that made matters worse. Her husband, Ram Singh, claims they were unaware that her appeal had been denied or that a final order had been served to report with bags packed for deportation. Terwinder Singh's attorney, Penny Jo Kundert, said any day a call can come from the immigration authorities telling her to deliver a suitcase for the flight to India.

Some immigration activists said it is difficult to understand how a woman could work for several years, as Terwinder Singh did for Kohl's Department Stores, own a home, pay taxes, buy a business, get a driver's licence and have children, and then one day be told to just leave when, as Kundert put it, "she committed no crime but to have a flat tyre".

Harold Block, an attorney specialising in immigration cases who's seen a lot of cases like Singh's, sees little recourse.

Changes in immigration laws in 1996 made it difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain permanent status, he said. Adding children to the equation might have made a difference had Terwinder Singh not been ordered deported.

"I guess this is an illustration of the harshness of the current immigration laws," Block said. Congress seemed interested in changes and "it might have happened if we hadn't run into 9/11."

Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said cases such as Terwinder Singh's "deal with a difficult issue. You're dealing with children who have every right to be in the United States. But that doesn't convey rights to the parent who decided to come here illegally."

Terwinder has two children - daughter Manpreet, 12, and son Gagan, 8. They are American citizens.

Ram Singh, 46, seems like a lost soul these days as he struggles to manage family, home and the liquor store business. Unlike his wife and children, he does not have a good command over spoken English and cannot read or write the language despite 20 years in the United States.

Ram Singh says without his wife, who managed everything, "I will lose everything". Either they must live in the US without their mother or return with her to "a country that is not their own", he said.

On their last visit to India, Ram Singh says, his eldest daughter spent much of the stay in a hospital because she became ill due to the food and water. The children do not read or write their parents' Punjabi language, and they speak it poorly.