Immigration rule divides Portland couple

[icymist]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001890346_apart29m.html


Monday, March 29, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Immigration rule divides Portland couple

By Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporter

Every other day or so, Cheryl Gallegos and her husband talk by telephone — he from his parents' home in Michoacan, Mexico, she from the Portland-area house they shared for four years.
They are painful conversations about missed holidays and missed milestones, and inevitably about the immigration tangle that may keep the couple apart for the next 10 years — or possibly longer.

Last year, a judge in Portland ordered Rogelio Gallegos, 32, permanently banished from the United States, citing a little-used clause in immigration law that bars immigrants who entered the country illegally from ever attempting legal immigration.

The ban is for a lifetime, although the law permits reconsideration after 10 years.

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