Ofelia Boudaguian says she hoped for fair treatment when she and her family came to the United States in 1995
Published:
4 December 2004 y., Saturday
Ofelia Boudaguian says she hoped for fair treatment when she and her family came to the United States in 1995, after years of suffering discrimination and violence in Latvia.
After nearly a decade in the St. Louis area, though, Boudaguian says she feels let down by the American legal system, which has denied the family political asylum and now threatens them with deportation at any moment.
"We live now day by day. It's so scary," she said. A knock on the door might mean that she and her husband, Vitalik Boudaguian, and their two children must gather their belongings, submit to arrest and go to a detention facility to await deportation.
Their one-year tourist visas expired May 18, 1996. The family's efforts to gain asylum have drawn support from a dedicated group of friends, who met Ofelia Boudaguian through her job as a cosmetologist at the Personalities Hair and Nails Salon in Manchester.
After the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here ruled July 22 to deny the family's request for asylum, the friends launched a full-bore campaign to block their deportation. They have met with Laura Bush, peppered acquaintances of Attorney General John Ashcroft with letters and phone calls, visited the office of President George W. Bush's uncle in Clayton, corresponded with the offices of U.S. Sens. Christopher "Kit" Bond and Jim Talent, and collected 2,000 signatures on the family's behalf.
Šaltinis:
stltoday.com
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Hundreds of New Yorkers enjoy a dip in rubbish dumpsters that have been converted into swimming pools as part of the city's summer initiative.
more »
On 19 July, a school, which had been reconstructed with the funding from Lithuania’s Special Mission in Afghanistan, was opened in the village of Suri, the Zabul Province in the South of Afghanistan.
more »
Self-employed workers and their partners will enjoy better social protection – including the right to maternity leave for the first time – under new EU legislation that enters into force today.
more »
A 45 U.S. dollar garage sale purchase turns out to be long lost Ansel Adams negatives worth 200 million dollars.
more »
A Turkish toddler survives a three-floor fall from a balcony when he lands on a stack of plastic pipes.
more »
Around 200 Magellan penguins, most of them dead, wash up on Uruguay's beaches.
more »
Europeans are calling on Member States to boost their efforts to improve road safety, according to a survey published by the European Commission today.
more »
With an increase in life expectancy in China has come an accompanying rise in dementia cases, which may leave the younger generation struggling to cope with treatment and care.
more »
These baby sea turtles should be swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, but instead they are recovering at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi.
more »
Reviving the Latin American tradition of the afternoon siesta, a hotel in Argentina brings siesta to the corporate workforce.
more »