Word: gutiérrez
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...Immigration and Naturalization Service picked up a baby-faced young man. Guti?rrez claimed he was only 16 and eligible for asylum. The usually unbending INS believed him and let him stay. It had been a lie, but it was hardly the most extreme thing Gutierrez had done in his life. He had been born in Guatemala in 1974 but his parents died while he was very young during the country?s brutal civil war. His sister Engracia, just four years his senior, was his only remaining family and he lived on the streets of the capital, Guatemala City...
...death, the first U.S. serviceman to be killed in combat in Gulf War 2 will receive what he always wanted in life: American citizenship. Marine Lance Corporal Jose Guti?rrez was shot in the chest as his unit took heavy fire in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Everyone believed he was 22. But his true age is part of a story of epic persistence that took him from Guatemala to Los Angeles, from the life of an orphan to the life of a Marine...
...After winning asylum, Guti?rrez shuffled between foster homes and was eventually placed with Marcelo and Nora Mosquera, themselves immigrants from Latin America. The Mosqueras, who have three biological children of their own, have raised 30 foster children. And so the Guatemalan orphan who had barely a family suddenly had a tribe of foster siblings. Still, he never forgot Engracia and the hardships she continued to live with in Guatemala. He would send her $20 or $30 whenever he could. Guti?rrez went to high school and community college, and dreamed of being an architect. But, on the advice of a foster...
...that same day, at 2 a.m., officials from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala arrived at the home of his birth sister, Engracia, now 32. ?It was difficult to believe,? she told the Associated Press, ?I thought it was a mistake.? Guti?rrez?s body now lies at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, while arrangements are made to return him to Guatemala. His foster parents will travel there for the funeral and his sister is planning to come to California next week for a memorial service...
...honor of his military service and death in combat, federal authorities have made him eligible for posthumous citizenship. All that needs to be done is for his next of kin to take his death certificate and $80 to an immigration office and Guti?rrez will become an American. Had Guti?rrez lived, his dream for his sister could have come true. She would have qualified to immigrate to the U.S. had he been naturalized. But that dream died with Jos? Guti?rrez in Iraq...
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