Ex-UI researcher faces deportation

Katarzyna Dziewanowska grew up in the “gray communist life” of Poland.

But it was in America where she found a truly nightmarish experience with a bureaucracy.

After nearly 14 years as a researcher at the University of Idaho, Dziewanowska has been denied permanent residency by U.S. immigration officials, who say she worked without authorization for eight months. She did that, she and her attorneys say, on the advice of the UI, and she quit working for a time when the university advised her to do so.

But her appeals have fallen on deaf ears with immigration officials. She’d like to take the case before an immigration judge, but that could take months or years. In the meantime, she can’t work and has no legal residency status. Because it is a family application, her husband – a UI researcher studying a promising treatment of retroviruses – can no longer receive grants. Her son can’t apply for a free-tuition program through his employer.

“She has no legal status,” said Michael Cherasia, her former attorney. “She’s not able to legally work. Certainly she can’t continue to do her research. (Agents) could come to her door any morning, arrest her, detain her and ship her out of the country.”

The rejection of her petition is part of a long pattern of bureaucratic communications straight out of Kafka. Her application for residency languished for years, status unknown. Frequently, neither Dziewanowska, her attorneys nor her colleagues could reach officials in person to discuss the case, they say. Seeking information about her case, she once called a number she found at an agency Web site; the person who answered could only provide information from the Web site.

“They eventually put me in a situation where you start to feel like a criminal, when you don’t have any intention to break the law,” said Dziewanowska, 64.

Her supporters say that Dziewanowska’s brief period of unauthorized work was a simple error, and that her record as a researcher and visiting worker should count in her favor. She’s been without work since October.

“This is kind of an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ experience,” said Cherasia, who specializes in immigration law. “The frustrating thing with this case is there has been no way to correct a simple, unintentional mistake.” The “sad, sad joke about all this,” he says, is that Dziewanowska and her husband, Witold Ferens, are doing important, possibly breakthrough research.

Dziewanowska was recruited to the UI in 1994 because of her research background, and she’s been involved in studying methods of fighting agents of bioterrorism such as the plague.

She’s earned FBI clearance for that research – at one point, she was granted such clearance while immigration officials were refusing to approve her authorization to work.

“She’s a damn good scientist,” said Patricia Hartzell, professor of biology and biochemistry and former dean of Dziewanowska’s department. “She’s really good.”

Her husband is studying a toxin found in sheep and cattle that shows promise in fighting retroviral diseases. Such diseases include AIDS in humans and a host of diseases in animals, and there is currently no cure or vaccine for them.

“These are the kind of people you want to kick out of the country?” Cherasia said. “Somebody isn’t thinking. They had the discretion to approve her petition, and they refused.”

A representative of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said she could not discuss specific cases, but said the agency makes information available to applicants online and via telephone, and said people can make appointments to discuss their case in person.

“We make all the information about immigration laws very accessible,” said Sharon Rummery, USCIS spokeswoman in San Francisco.

No answers from the UI

Top administrators at the UI would not answer questions about Dziewanowska’s case, or about whether university representatives provided her with faulty advice. The university’s media-relations office released a general statement, saying that it has obligations to the government when accepting foreign students and faculty, but that the ultimate responsibility lies with the individuals.

“In instances where an application for permanent residency has been filed, the university must confirm employment and other information,” the statement reads. “However, we do not and cannot make immigration-related decisions for or on behalf of individuals and their immigration status.”

Under immigration law, if an employer gives incorrect advice to an employee, the responsibility for following the law still rests with the worker. But foreign-born employees often rely on universities to help negotiate the labyrinth of immigration law.

The UI was involved at virtually every stage of her dealings with immigration officials, and it filed several applications on her behalf. Dziewanowska says she simply relied on the university’s human-rights department about when she was approved to work and when she was not.

Hartzell and others have appealed to members of Congress to intervene on Dziewanowska’s behalf. She’s also pressed the university administration to acknowledge its mistake, in an effort to help with Dziewanowska’s appeals.

“They’ve really washed their hands of the case,” Hartzell said. “They’re just protecting themselves legally all the time, instead of doing the right thing.”

‘My big mistake’

Dziewanowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1943, in the midst of attacks and occupations by both Germany and the Soviet Union. She grew up under the communist regime that arose after World War II, and entered academia after earning her master’s at the University of Warsaw in 1966.

Over the next few decades, she built her research career between positions in Poland, Canada and the U.S. By the early 1990s, she was recruited to the UI to help with plant-breeding research.

She came to the Palouse in 1994 – “maybe my big mistake,” she said.

She worked on a visa for a few years, and then applied for status as an outstanding professor or researcher – a precursor to applying for permanent residency and a green card. She was granted outstanding researcher status and, with help from the UI, applied for permanent residency in 2003.

While that application was considered, she was required to apply for annual temporary work permits, known as Employment Authorization Documents. In the fall of 2004, a problem arose with her second EAD application.

Based on new requirements, Dziewanowska’s application was rejected twice. The first one came because she submitted a profile photo instead of a face-forward one, because standards had changed after she filed an application under the previous rules. The second occurred because her second photo included glare on one lens of her glasses.

The letter notifying her of the second rejection came in September 2004. “There is no appeal to this decision,” the letter read.

Meanwhile, her previous EAD had expired, but the UI’s human rights office told Dziewanowska she had a 240-day grace period in which she could continue to work, according to Dziewanowska, Cherasia and e-mail communications from the UI.

Cherasia said university representatives simply mixed up the rules – one type of work visa does have a grace period after expiration, but EADs do not.

“If you have an EAD, and your EAD runs out, you have to quit working, period,” he said. “I think someone got the two mixed up.”

So, as Dziewanowska worked to clear up the problem, she continued her research at the UI. At this point, she was involved with research on the plague – a subject of great concern to federal officials concerned about bioterrorism. Her work was a crucial first step in the process – purifying the proteins from the plague for later research steps.

She did this work over the next several months. In the meantime, through a convoluted series of communications, she was told that her application had been improperly denied and would be approved. Then she was told that the original denial would stand. Then, in April 2005, she was told to stop working by the UI, which said her grace period had expired.

“So I stopped work on April 10,” she said.

In the meantime, she filed another EAD application – “New photograph, with no glare!” she said – and it was approved.

But when her application for permanent residency was eventually denied last June, it was the period of “unauthorized employment” that was cited as the reason.

‘No room for mistakes’

Throughout the process, Dziewanowska had urged UI to retain an immigration lawyer to help with the case and been told it wasn’t necessary, she said. She eventually hired Cherasia on her own, and he filed a motion to have the case reconsidered. It was rejected in March.

“It was a real brush-off,” he said.

There was little rationale offered for the decision, he said, though immigration officials have said that as a university professor, Dziewanowska should be able to follow the laws. She now has hired Maria Andrade, a Boise attorney who specializes in “removal” cases, but she’s in a nebulous position.

Once someone’s application for residency is rejected, the next step is to be ordered to court before an immigration judge. But that could take a long time – perhaps years – and in the meantime, Dziewanowska has no way to earn a living. She’s a year away from retirement, and she and her husband have a new home in Moscow. She’s not sure what she’s going to do now.

“I never tried to break the law,” she said. “I tried to play according to the rules.”

Her attorney, Andrade, said it’s unfortunate that the university hasn’t stepped forward to take more responsibility. But even if it did, the burden for meeting the laws would still fall to Dziewanowska.

“On the immigration side, there’s no room for good-faith mistakes in the law, and this is one of them,” she said. “It’s a sad case. It’s a very sad case.”