Greenwich Time
September 17, 2003

By Vesna Jaksic

Catherine Lamairesse’s children were sad when they couldn’t enter contests on the backs of cereal boxes. Helene Seiler couldn’t get a French au pair to help her take care of her son and daughter. Penny Cox had to pay $500 to get a cell phone in the United States.

The three town residents quickly learned that living in the United States without citizenship often leads to quirky exemptions and sometimes frustrating problems and emotional burdens.

Today is Citizenship Day, which President Harry Truman signed into law in 1952 to recognize new American citizens. While people new to the United States often face cultural adjustments and struggle to overcome language barriers, the road to citizenship is full of other, less-known obstacles.

Some disparities are minor, such as not being eligible to enter some contests, while others carry serious financial implications, such as ineligibility for scholarships, federal loans and welfare benefits, and higher costs for car insurance and cell phones.

Tatiana Mori-Yamasato, 27, has been in the country for seven years, but she will not get her first paycheck until the end of this month. The Stamford resident, who moved with her husband from Lima, Peru, seven years ago, didn’t have a work permit until recently. So Mori-Yamasato went back to school, paying out-of-state tuition at the University of Connecticut because she wasn’t a permanent resident. She also was ineligible for federal loans and most scholarships.

“I fit every single requirement except to be a citizen,” said Mori-Yamasato, who is part Japanese. “That was kind of silly, because my GPA was even higher than the people submitting applications” for a scholarship.

Using a grant from the Greenwich Arts Council, where she now works part-time as an assistant, was the only way she was able to pay for her studies. Meanwhile, her husband, Felix Yamasato, 30, a financial analyst in White Plains, N.Y., worked until recently on an H1B work visa, which has its own limitations.

“There was a point where people were switching (jobs) and making a little more and the H1 prevented me from doing that without risking (unemployment),” he said.

Both recently received approval for green cards, which will give them permanent residency and work privileges, but not the right to vote.

Seiler, 38, a Paris native, couldn’t get a French au pair for her children until she got her green card three years ago because au pair companies do not work with people who lack permanent residency, she said. Seiler also learned that founding a company can be a hassle without citizenship. She had to make her executive recruitment and career coaching company a corporation, because noncitizens are not allowed to form limited partnerships, she said.

For many noncitizens, the lack of a U.S. credit history or other paper trails in this country makes it daunting to obtain credit cards, driver’s licenses, social security numbers and cell phones.

“You can have all the money and the position in your country,” said Lamairesse, 52, another Paris native who lives in Old Greenwich. “But you’re like a newborn baby when it comes to credit cards.”

Seiler said she had to pay higher car insurance premiums because she did not have a driving history in the United States.  Cox, 45, an Argentine who lives in Old Greenwich, said she and her husband paid $500 to get a cell phone because they did not have credit history in the United States.

Things have only gotten tougher for noncitizens since the terrorist attacks in 2001, because rules for everything from traveling to working have gotten stricter, said William Manning, an immigration lawyer in White Plains.

“People are concerned because the rules change frequently, and they just don’t know what the rules are going to be,” Manning said.

What makes things harder is that many U.S. citizens are not aware of the hurdles noncitizens face each day, said Myra Oliver, executive director of the International Institute of Connecticut, a Bridgeport-based nonprofit that works with international residents.
“You don’t really think about this unless it happens to a member of your family,” she said.

Many restrictions carry an emotional toll, Oliver said. While jury duty is hardly a sought-after activity for most Americans, Lamairesse found not being able to participate in the legal system hurtful.
“You say, ‘Oh, you’re not a citizen; you don’t count,’ ” she said.

But Lamairesse and Seiler both said not being able to vote is the hardest thing about not being a citizen. “I feel like I’m giving my money to people I have no control on,” Seiler said, talking about paying taxes without voting rights. It is tough to have a sense of identity when you don’t have citizenship in the country where you live, she added. “We’re kind of outcast,” she said. “I feel like I’m swimming in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Michi Tsunoda, 45, who is Japanese, said she was offended when President Bush directed a speech after the terrorist attacks to fellow citizens. “As foreigners, if (the) president is repeating ‘Americans, Americans, Americans,’ what about non-American people who lost their lives?” said Tsunoda, who moved here two years ago when her husband’s job was transferred.

But for all the problems they encounter along the way, the residents interviewed said the trouble is well worth the privilege of living in the United States. Mori-Yamasato said it has opened up opportunities for the kind of life she would never have had in Peru.

“Two years ago, if you asked me if I wanted to be an American, I would have said no,” she said. “But now, I think I do. I want to have what everyone else has. It’s sort of like a reward after all these years of struggle.”