Deported Poles Miss Spokane Already Ins Forces Them To Leave After 10 Years In Spokane

Miro Babinski wanted to explain how bleak it was for her to be forced back to Poland after 10 years in Spokane.

But her words, she said, were “too small.”

“We don’t have any chance over here for unemployment money or social help. Nothing. We have nothing,” Babinski said Saturday in a telephone interview from Poland. “We don’t know what we’re going to do.”

On Friday, Miro, her husband, Bogdan, and their 13-year-old daughter, Martyna, arrived in Szczecin, Poland.

They were deported Thursday by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for being illegal immigrants, after living and working in Spokane for 10 years.

Miro, 38, worked at Colonial Care nursing home. Bogdan, 39, was a meat cutter at S&P Meats Inc. They were able to afford a home, car and a boat.

“We work so hard to buy the house. We work so hard to buy everything. In one minute, everything is gone,” Babinski said. “Ten years, it’s a very long time.”

Friends and family members in Spokane were outraged by their deportation.

“There’s got to be a pardon process,” said Linda Green, a friend of the family in Spokane. She’s still seeking a way to help them.

INS officials said all illegal immigrants are treated the same and the federal agency was upholding the law.

Family members in Spokane were holding an estate sale Saturday and today at their South Hill home, 3522 E. 36th Ave., to help raise money for the family.

Babinski said she and her daughter have been banned from visiting or living in the United States for 10 years. Bogdan is banned for life. She was unsure why his penalty was tougher.

Martyna may be able to return for school on a student visa because she’s essentially innocent, Babinski said.

Their daughter came to Spokane when she was 3. Martyna played the flute and was an eighth-grade honors student at Chase Middle School with a 3.6 grade-point average, her mother said. After graduating from Adams Elementary, she received an elementary school diploma from President Clinton.

“She was always thinking America is her country,” Babinski said. “She’s crying a lot. She’s still thinking she’s going to come back to Spokane and go to school.”

The Polish school system is so different that they are very concerned for Martyna, who does not speak Polish.

Private schools focus more on English, but they are too expensive, Babinski said.

They are staying with her husband’s retired parents, who live in a small apartment and struggle to pay the bills. Her parents are also retired and have difficulty covering medical expenses.

“We don’t know if we’ll find a job over here,” Babinski said. “We lost everything that we had in Spokane.”

They don’t know where to start to put the pieces of their lives back together, Babinski said. They can’t find work until they have a government seal with their address, but they can’t rent a place unless they have jobs, she said. They have a meeting with a government official next week see about getting proper work papers, she said.

Even people with college degrees cannot find work, she said.

“Here it is very expensive,” Babinski said. “It’s not like middle class in Spokane.”

Miro and Bogdan left Poland in 1988 for a vacation with the intention of never coming back, Babinski said.

They lived in Germany for two years, when Bogdan’s brother came to visit from Spokane.

“He was telling us how it is better life in America. How there won’t be a problem with immigration,” she said. “That is why we decide to go.”

After a week in Spokane, they applied for a green card.

“We got denied, always denied,” Babinski said.

They were told there would be a seven-year wait. Then the laws changed and the wait increased to 10 years.

“They said we didn’t have a chance,” she said.

Then Miro and Bogdan divorced. Bogdan’s brother and his wife, both U.S. citizens, also divorced. The brothers then married each other’s wife - while maintaining their original unions - in an attempt to gain legal citizenship.

“I know what we did was wrong, but we were thinking we had one chance to stay,” Babinski said.

They were arrested Nov. 20, separated and incarcerated for nine days.

Their deportation began early Thursday morning, when Martyna was awakened in her holding cell at Martin Hall, a detention facility in Medical Lake for juvenile offenders that also contracts with the INS.

Martyna said INS agents never told her where they were going. She wore leg restraints and handcuffs as she waited in the Spokane airport.

“He was trying to convince me that my parents were criminals and they were bad people,” Martyna said. “He kept saying I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She began crying and later heard the INS agent joke about it, she said. When he accidentally bumped his chair into another man, Martyna claims he said, “At least you didn’t cry on me.”

Martyna said she doesn’t want to leave her parents and come back to the United States alone. But she wants to visit her best friend this summer, she said.

“I’m OK, but my parents are going to try, we really want to go back to America because life here is hard.”

Babinski’s city has changed since she left in 1988.

“The communist change was supposed to be better, but it is far worse,” Babinski said. “When we left it was communism. There was nothing in stores and it was so quiet. Now there’s more stuff. When you walk, someone can kill you or steal from you.”