Gulf Vet Wins Battle for Visa

Perseverance paid off for Navy corpsman Alfredo B. Quiambao last week, when U.S. officials agreed to bend the law a bit and authorized a visa for the Filipino native, ending a yearlong battle with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

At first, INS officials had refused to give Quiambao, who is assigned as a corpsman with the 1st Marine Divsion at Camp Pendleton, a visa on grounds that a quirk in the law made him ineligible for permanent residency because he entered the United States from the Philippines on military orders.

Now, another quirk in the law will enable Quiambao to apply for U.S. citizenship this week, just a few days after getting his permanent resident’s visa, said attorney Carl Shusterman, who represents Quiambao. Normally, permanent resident aliens who are not in the military have to wait at least seven years after they get a visa before they can apply for citizenship.

“But we discovered another section of the law that allows him to apply for citizenship because he’s already served honorably for three years in the military,” said Shusterman. “So, my client will be dropping in at the INS office again this week to apply for U.S. citizenship.”

Quiambao, 31, has served in the Navy for eight years and his current enlistment is scheduled to end in December. He is a Persian Gulf War veteran, where he was decorated for treating wounded Marines under fire during the battle for Kuwait.

Fearful of establishing a precedent, INS officials last Thursday quietly agreed to a seldom-used procedure to give Quiambao his visa and discouraged media coverage, Shusterman said.

Quiambao was instructed to walk across the border to Tijuana and then turn around and re-enter the United States through the pedestrian gates. Although he did not have a visa at that point, and immigration officials could have legally refused him entry, Quiambao was “paroled” into the United States and issued a permanent resident visa.

INS officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

Shusterman, a former INS official, had recommended last year and again in April that Quiambao be paroled into the United States. However, this suggestion was brushed aside by INS officials who argued that he did not qualify for permanent residency because he was on active duty in the Navy.

His case raised considerable publicity and some controversy for INS officials. He had been frustrated for almost a year by the unbending INS bureaucracy, which rejected his wife’s petition to sponsor Quiambao for permanent residency.

Purita Quiambao, 38, is a nurse at Paradise Valley Hospital and is a permanent U.S. resident. She is also a native of the Philippines. The couple have one daughter, who was also born in the Philippines and who is now a permanent U.S. resident. A second daughter was born in the United States.

The Quiambaos entered the United States on his military orders. Like thousands of other Filipinos on active duty, Quiambao joined the Navy under an obscure law that allows Filipino nationals to enlist in the Navy without getting an immigration visa. Normally, a foreign national cannot enlist in the U.S. armed forces without first getting a visa.

In 1989, Purita Quiambao received permanent residency overnight when Congress passed a law that extended special preference to foreign-born nurses. The law was passed to fill a critical shortage of nurses in U.S. hospitals.