The Amuse Bouche street cart vendor who was picked up by immigrations agents two weeks ago, will leave for Paris on Thursday, according to an e-mail sent out by his wife.
“Dear Friends, It is now final: Murat will be leaving the country on Thursday, November 12th,” wrote Pelin Celebi-Ariner, his wife who may join him later this year. “Our request for deferred action was denied, and even though we filed our green card application it did not bring about a reversal in ICE’s decision to deport him.”
Mrs. Celebi-Ariner said they had considered delaying the process, but decided it was not “worth the gamble” and spending more time in the Yuba County Jail. “So, I bought his plane ticket today,” she wrote in an e-mail sent late Tuesday night.
“I will never forget the t-shirts, the good wishes, the many many offers of legal, financial and emotional assistance. I know that once Murat is back in France and reads all of his emails he will have things to say of his own, so I am leaving it at that,” she wrote.
Her e-mail ended, “Make your mouth Happy!!!”
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Although I feel compassion for this couple’s predicament, there are laws set in place that people shouldn’t sidestep because they feel like it. I met and fell in love with my husband while he was here on a student visa. One year later his visa expired and he had to go back to the UK. We remained committed to one another flying back and forth for visits every few months. We were apart for 2 years and it was torcher. We applied for the fiance visa which took another 7 months. He came to America and we were married. We will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary on December 3. We have a great marriage and 2 beautiful children. Looking back, that time apart only demonstrated the strength of the commitment we had for one another and will have forever. I hope this couple will find a way they can be together in the same country – legally.
Just because he’s “popular” and supposedly a nice guy doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to follow the rules and obey immigration law like everyone else.
So much for the following emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty, huh?
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
The operative word is “plan.” It’s none of the business of the state whether people plan to be married or not. Some people go through long complicated engagements with wedding planners and all that rot. Others elope to Vegas or just walk down to the courthouse the same day as the proposal. Neither custom is preferable, and the state has as much business asking if you plan to get married as if you plan to have sex–another act which is none of their business and the answers “Hell if I know” and “None of your business, but whichever way it is, I reserve the right to change my mind” are completely appropriate, if undiplomatic.
Hell, sex can result in an automatic citizen without their approval anyway, so they might as well just approve resident alien marriages.
Why they deport this guy, who’s obviously a hard working person ….
it’s a sad story, to be sure, but the rules are pretty clearly stated. my spouse and I had to be apart for a long time waiting for our paperwork to be approved. You’re not allowed to enter the country with the intention of staying past the 90 day visa period. getting married in that time is not sufficient. if you’re planning to marry and stay, you have to declare before you come and fill out the right paperwork and then wait. They tried to take a shortcut and got burned. You can argue that rules should be changed, and I would support you, but we were able to figure them out and follow them.
The law is flaunted daily because it’s pretty egregious to begin with. If every illegal worker in the country were deported next Thursday, the food service industry would grind to a halt, California agriculture along with it, and good luck trying to get someone to mow your lawn or trim your hedges.
The fact is he’s now married to an American citizen, and if it were a green-card marriage, they actually would have filed the paperwork properly. But the hypocritical thing is, since it was a love match, they now get harassed by petty bureaucrats who I’m certain still hypocritically eat at restaurants with illegal workers without busting them because they want their cheap nachos and strawberry margaritas the same as the next Californian.
Hope they choke on them.
Theirs was an egregious flaunting of the law without regard for the privileges granted their special request.
They filed for a green card after he got arrested? Well that should change everything.