A happy ending

On May 31st I blogged about the immigration mess here in Palm Beach County where a son and mother were being separated. An article in today's post says Diana Vattiat and her son Christian will soon be re-united. She just received a notice from immigration that the petition for her son has been expedited.

I blogged about this before in my thread- http://thefloridamasochist.blogspot.com/2005/05/another-sign-of-our-useless.html

Today's PB Post story can be found at- http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2005/06/09/m1a_KidReunion_0609.html

WEST PALM BEACH — Diana Vattiat cried in disbelief when the call came from an immigration official telling her that she will soon be reunited with her 4-year-old son.

On Wednesday, her petition to bring Christian DeGraw from the Philippines, where he was born, to her West Palm Beach home was approved after nearly three years of failed applications.

'I never would have left if I had known I would miss these years, ' says Diana Vattiat – on a visit last month with her son, Christian DeGraw, in the Philippines. 'I have missed seeing him talk and walk and learn.'

"I still don't believe they'll let him come," said Vattiat, 23, smiling through tears. "There have been so many disappointments before."

In Washington, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Bill Scharfenberger said officials approved the request "with expedited handling" after learning of Vattiat's plight in a May 31 story in The Palm Beach Post.

"A lot of us here are parents and we got involved," he said. "It was a collective effort."

Christian was 4 months old when his mother, a U.S. citizen, left him in the Philippines for what she thought would be "a couple of months." She planned to get a job, save some money and send for him.

While working at Publix in Lake Worth, she befriended Paul Vattiat, who helped her fill out the numerous forms to petition to bring her son to the United States — and along the way asked her to marry him.

Since receiving the call from CIS, Paul Vattiat said, "I've been jumping up and down, I'm so thrilled. Bill (Scharfenberger) sounds like a really nice guy who took a personal interest in this."

A few steps remain before Christian, who celebrates his fifth birthday on July 24, can leave the Philippines. But the biggest hurdle — getting immigration Form I-130 approved — has been cleared, Scharfenberger said.

The child's paperwork has been forwarded to the State Department's processing center in Portsmouth, N.H. From there, it will be sent to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Scharfenberger said.

I know from my own experience with my wife this will take a few months. I'm happy for these people but it probably won't happen in time for either Mrs. Vattiat to be at her son's 5th birthday or even before she gives birth to the child she is pregnant with now.

Before a visa is issued, Christian must have a physical and make an 18-hour bus trip from his grandmother's rural village to Manila for an interview with embassy officials. That's a lot for a 4-year-old, but "he really wants to come home to his mother," Paul Vattiat said.

The couple visited Christian in the Philippines last month but were denied a visa to bring him home.

It is still unclear why it took almost three years, thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees and three trips to the Philippines before the paperwork was approved. CIS' most recent ruling, on Dec. 14, denied the Vattiats' application to bring Christian here, but they never received the notice, apparently because the home they were renting in Lake Worth was destroyed by Hurricane Jeanne and they had to move.

Many immigration authorities said approval should have been routine.

Sounds like idiots at immigration. She is a US citizen, her child should have been allowed her. How many US citizens living abroad have children? Thousands.

The Vattiats, who are expecting a boy in early August, have applied for a visitor's visa for Imelda DeGraw, the grandmother who has raised Christian. She is entitled to apply for citizenship as the immediate relative of a U.S. citizen.

Their immediate concern is paying for Christian's plane ticket and a $100 fee to petition for his grandmother's visa. "I'll find a way," Paul Vattiat said.

He said the couple hadn't decided when to give Christian the good news.

"He will be so excited, he won't understand that it will still take weeks or months to get him here," Vattiat said. "But we'll have to tell (Diana's) mother, even if we can't get permission for her to come with him."

Diana would love to plan a fifth birthday party here for her son.

"She has missed all his previous birthday parties," Vattiat said. "I'm just hoping she won't miss this one."

Congratulations to all concerned. I hope the Post does a follow up when Christian arrives in the States. I'll blog that when the time comes