Desde 1996 los consulados estadounidenses en el exterior ostentan un poder enorme para demorar o denegar visas a inmigrantes que buscan reunirse con sus familias estadounidenses.
Those powers are such that not even a spokeswoman for the State Department could succeed to elicit a response from consular officials in Guayaquil, regarding an Ecuadorean man who committed suicide last February after waiting for more than 3 years hoping to rejoin his American wife and children in New York.
The arbitrariness of some U.S. consulates abroad is such that they flagrantly violate the rights of U.S. citizens to live with their immediate family members.
According to the Immigration Policy Center report published this March “USCIS… must address the complaints in recent years that too many people are denied benefits, or subjected to repeated requests for additional evidence, because adjudicators are looking for reasons to deny rather than grant benefits.”
Sent by his parents from Ecuador Segundo Encalada arrived in the U.S. when he was 17. After marrying and fathering 3 children, Segundo was forced to leave under the threat of deportation.
Bent on “looking for reasons to deny rather than grant benefits”, the U.S. Consulate in Guayaquil went as far as claiming “it had no record” of the July 20, 2009 interview with Segundo and his wife Elizabeth Drummond.
Elizabeth had to travel to Ecuador despite her poverty and concern of leaving behind for a week her small children aged 4, 5, and 9.
Her dismay over such a straight-faced and blatant lie, moved Elizabeth to strongly protest the consulate’s assertion in writing on October 22, 2009.
The U.S. Consulate in Guayaquil replied 2 months later on Christmas Eve and “suddenly apologized for the delay and professed great concern” according to the New York Times.
That Christmas, Segundo took his life. He was 28.
Regarding similar abuses and irregularities the Immigration Policy Center exhorts that USCIS “clearly articulate the principles it uses to evaluate and adjudicate individual cases”.
To evaluate and adjudicate visas to reunite immigrants with their American children spouses, or parents can no longer be left to the sole, arbitrary and thus immoral discretion of U.S. consulates.
