Students Fight to Keep Teachers in the U.S.

Va., Md. Instructors Lose Appeals to Stay

Luz Chamorro wants to stay in the U.S., despite having signed an agreement saying she would return to Colombia after three years of teaching. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

There is a group of sixth-graders at Arlington's Gunston Middle School who love their science teacher so much that they regularly eat lunch in her classroom and stay late after school to work on projects with her.

"She has taught me so much," said Kallan Moore, 12. "She's inspired a lot of people to go into careers in science."

"She cares about everyone," said Dana Warnecke, 11.

"She does cool projects," said Sloane Mebane, 12. "Like next year, she wants to do a weather club, so even the seventh- and eighth-graders she's had [in past sixth-grade classes] can participate."

But that might not happen. The teacher, Luz Chamorro, is a native of Colombia who came to the United States in 2000 on a cultural exchange visa. The visa stipulated that she had to return to her country after three years, and the U.S. government is telling her that it is time to go.

Chamorro said she intended to return after three years, but in 2002 she married a U.S. citizen and changed her mind. For three years, she has been trying to get a waiver so she can apply for permanent residency and continue teaching at Gunston.

Her students have tried to help by circulating petitions throughout the school. And parents have written to the State Department and their congressmen.

But two weeks ago, she learned her last appeal was denied.

"I really was shocked that the lawyer, when he appealed, was turned down," she said, adding that she believes the recent national attention to immigration issues might be making her case harder. "So are they trying to be stricter on it? I don't know, but it seems that way. In the past, you would know that if you married a U.S. citizen, you get your residency" permit.

Most foreigners who marry U.S. citizens while on a visitor visa can adjust their status without leaving the country. But if they overstay a J-1 visa -- the three-year kind Chamorro has -- they must leave the United States to apply for a family member visa even if they marry a citizen, said Michael Defensor, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On rare occasions, the U.S. grants waivers -- for example, if the return home would constitute extreme hardship to the family. Chamorro has argued that her husband, a freelance photographer, would suffer hardship in Colombia because of the country's high crime rate and poor pay for photographers. But Defensor said an extreme hardship would have to be something such as a medical condition that cannot be treated in the home country or a situation where a person's life would be in danger.

Chamorro came to the United States through the North Carolina-based Visiting International Faculty Program, which brings teachers from around the world to work in U.S. schools for up to three years. Teachers with the program sign a pledge to return to their country for at least two years afterward.