Nigerian Student’s One-Man Dream Act at Stake in Congress

Sopuruchi Chukwueke grew up as an outcast in the village of Ovim in southeastern Nigeria. Tumors that distorted one side of his face wouldn’t stop growing, and a medicine man said he should be taken away and drowned. In 2001, when he was 15, his parents took him to an orphanage and abandoned him.

He was rescued by a missionary nun, who arranged for medical care in the U.S. Eleven years and seven operations later, doctors have removed the benign growths caused by the genetic disease neurofibromatosis and have performed reconstructive surgery.
In that time, Chukwueke, who lost his right eye to the tumors, has earned a high school equivalency diploma, achieved a 3.82 grade-point average as a biochemistry and chemical biology major at Wayne State University in Detroit and won acceptance to the University of Toledo’s medical school in Ohio.
“My own personal struggles to receive treatment have motivated, inspired and continually encouraged me to pursue a medical career,” he said in an interview conducted by e-mail because extensive surgeries to his mouth and jaw make it hard for him to speak clearly on the telephone.
He can’t start classes this month, though, because the visa that enabled him to travel to Michigan for treatment expired 10 years ago, and he has been in the U.S. illegally since then. The only hope Chukwueke has of achieving his goal is enactment of legislation sponsored by U.S. Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, that applies solely to him and would give him permanent U.S. residency.

Expired Visas

About 11.5 million people were in the U.S. illegally as of January 2011, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security released in March of this year. Of those, an estimated 40 percent entered on visas that have since expired, said Michelle Mittlestadt, communications director at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research center that studies immigration.
A long-shot option for obtaining legal status is a private- relief bill, which applies to just one person and is frequently related to an immigration issue. While about 100 such bills are introduced in each two-year congressional session, few are enacted: So far in the current session of Congress, which started Jan. 1, 2011, none of the 82 that have been introduced has reached the White House. In 2009 and 2010, only two became law. In 2007 and 2008, none succeeded.
The Senate passed Levin’s legislation, S. 285, by unanimous consent on July 25. A week later the House Judiciary Committee approved it by voice vote, so the measure that would allow Chukwueke to fulfill his dream is just one step -- passage by the full House -- from President Barack Obama’s desk.

Green Card

The bill would grant permanent residency to Chukwueke --who goes by his middle name, Victor -- as long as he applies for it within two years of the bill becoming law. It would reduce, by one, the number of immigrant visas available to Nigerians and would bar preferential treatment for members of his family.
Chukwueke, 26, lives in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park with the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy, a Nigeria-based order of Roman Catholic nuns who work with the poor in Africa, Europe and North America. Members of the order have cared for him since he arrived from the orphanage.
“Nigerian doctors told me that there was nothing they could do, that they do not have the facilities and expertise to handle my sophisticated medical problem,” Chukwueke said by e- mail.

‘American Dad’

The nuns also connected him with the man he calls his “American dad” -- Jerry Burns, a nurse-practitioner at Wayne State who has taken in 17 children over the last 12 years through the Lutheran Social Services of Michigan program for refugees.
“Victor is a remarkable human being,” Burns, a 58-year- old former Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, said in a telephone interview. “We immediately began to bond. He very quickly called me ’Dad.’”
Because of his visa situation, Chukwueke wasn’t eligible for assistance from the Lutheran Social Services program. Burns said he told the young man that he would help him go to college and found a financial benefactor who has paid for much of his education and wishes to remain anonymous.
Source businessweek.com