Student seeking second deferment

WASHINGTON ­— Marie Gonzalez, the Westminster College student who won a rare deferment last year from deportation proceedings to Costa Rica, is seeking another extension so she can remain in the U.S.

The 20-year-old Gonzalez has a powerful ally in Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, who has again asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to intervene in her case. She has been ordered to leave the country by July 1, when her yearlong deferment runs out.

Durbin wants to postpone the deportation order a few more months, anticipating that Congress will pass immigration legislation that would give students like Gonzalez a chance to gain legal status.

“Marie has done nothing to merit being uprooted from her home and sent to a nation she can barely recall,” Durbin said in a letter to Chertoff last week. “We are not a country that punishes children for the mistakes of their parents.”

Gonzalez was born in Costa Rica but has lived in Jefferson City since she was 5 years old. That’s when her parents came to the U.S. on six-month visitor visas. They never left after the visas expired.

Her parents claim their situation arises from a misunderstanding about immigration laws. They say attorneys told them in 1991 that they could apply to become permanent residents if they lived in the U.S. for seven years, even if they entered on the visitor visas. That option was repealed by a federal law in 1997.

While Gonzalez’s parents were forced to return to Costa Rica last year, Marie won the right to stay in the U.S. for an additional year after mounting a national publicity campaign.

Gonzalez, who just completed her freshman year at Westminster College in Fulton, said Tuesday she still can’t imagine having to leave the country where she grew up.

“It eats at me now not knowing what’s going to happen,” she said. “As much as you can prepare yourself for it mentally, it would still be a shock.”

Durbin is a sponsor of the DREAM Act, a measure that would give students who have lived in the U.S. for five years or more the chance to become citizens — even if they are in the country illegally — if they complete college or join the military.