Deportation

Like thousands of other Liberians who fled a war and started new lives here, Jamesetta Wills uses the bulk of her salary to support family back in West Africa. Fourteen of her relatives and six unrelated children - orphaned by the fighting and adopted by her family - live in Monrovia, Liberia, with no source of income but her remittances. Wills, a counselor for mentally handicapped children in Philadelphia, sends her relatives $500 of her $700 salary every two weeks. She would like to bring family members to her home in Upper Darby to reduce that burden, but her peculiar "temporary" legal status excludes her from sponsoring them here.

A 36-year-old Nigerian living in the Philadelphia area since 1993 faces deportation because of his religious beliefs. Chukwuezue Henry Nworu has applied to live here as a legal immigrant with his wife, Saria, and their two children, all three of whom are American citizens. Nworu belongs to the Faith Tabernacle Congregation, a 100-year-old Philadelphia-based Christian denomination that has spread to Africa and other parts of the world. A believer in faith healing, Nworu refuses to let a doctor draw a blood sample for a standard test required by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to screen for AIDS and syphilis.

Her psychiatrists say Rita DiPeppe has been scarred, to the point of psychosis and multiple suicide attempts, by one separation after another. Her mother left her behind in Italy, when she was 7, to come to Philadelphia. At 9, she was torn from her village in Sicily to come to the United States. Then she lost her husband, her two teenage daughters and her home in quick succession after a bitter divorce and custody battle. Now DiPeppe, who pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter for fatally shooting her estranged husband, Carlo, on his Haddonfield lawn in 1991, could again be severed from everyone and everything she knows.

After sentencing Jose Bourgeon to prison for sexually abusing two children, Judge George Koudelis told the Venezuelan citizen that he would not be moved to speak favorably of him should the Immigration and Naturalization Service come calling. "It's my feeling that, you having been convicted, you are not the type of individual the United States wants to have here," Koudelis said in Delaware County Court yesterday. A jury convicted Bourgeon, 23, in May of two counts of corrupting children.

After she finished telling her story, her supporters - her husband, lawyer and Chinatown activists - pressed around a coffee table to talk tactics and debate which politicians might be willing to help. The woman whose future they weighed, Zhen Xing Jiang, sat away from the group, silent, staring at the floor. Her babies were dead. And her ordeal was not over. In person, Jiang, 32, seems too slight a presence to have provoked rallies in two cities and headlines as far away as Beijing.

The House voted 238-181 yesterday to suspend for two years the deportation of thousands of Salvadorans and Nicaraguans illegally living in the United States. The Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a similar measure, but congressional sources said the bill probably would not come before the full Senate until October. Moreover, the inclusion of Salvadorans raises the possibility of a veto by President Reagan. Earlier this month, the Reagan administration extended protection against deportation to Nicaraguan refugees, but refused to include Salvadorans.

What better candidate for leniency from U.S. immigration officials than Philadelphian Joe Velasquez? By all appearances, he's a hardworking family man, with three sons educated by the Christian Brothers - a guy who married young and stayed married. At age 52, the native of Panama has lived in this country for 46 years. But under the strict terms of the nation's three-year-old crackdown on illegal immigrants, and those legal immigrants who have had scrapes with the law, Mr. Velasquez faces deportation - with little or no appeal - because of a drug arrest and conviction nearly two decades ago. Even if authorities had moved to deport Mr. Velasquez after his 1980 sentencing to five years' probation, there would have been a good case against it - due to his then-addiction and family situation.

On the surface, last week's Supreme Court ruling on a California deportation case focused on obscure legal technicalities that few Americans would understand, much less care about. In fact, the high court decision should have no significant impact on most immigrants facing deportation orders, immigration officials said. It's the message behind the ruling that alarms immigration lawyers and immigrant group leaders. The ruling has a "chilling effect on freedom of speech," said Philadelphia immigration lawyer Joe Hohenstein.

NEWARK, N.J. - Eight Indonesian Christians who defied U.S. deportation orders by seeking refuge in a church have been granted a temporary reprieve, immigration officials and church leaders confirmed Monday. The Indonesians, five of whom who had been living for months in the Highland Park church and three who lived nearby, were granted a temporary stay of their deportation orders, allowing them to remain in the United States legally for a year. The eight have been placed on orders of supervision and will be allowed to remain in their community instead of being placed in detention but will be required to report to immigration authorities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Harold Ort said of the Feb. 14 decision.

RE YOUR editorial "Dignity and Respect Cornerstones of Immigration Policy": You got it right to advocate offering immigrants a pathway to citizenship and a tightening of enforcement. What won't work is the deportation of 11 million hard-working men and women on whom our economy depends and the criminalization of religious and social workers who address their material and spiritual needs. Congress should address the causes of migration over which the U.S. has influence, like the relationship of NAFTA to the increase of rural unemployment in Mexico.