Print  email 

Agency says hurt veteran must leave

DEPORTATION: Man failed to reveal misdemeanors, says U.S.

BY PHIL FEROLITO | Yakima Herald-Republic • Published November 02, 2009

• Comments (0)

YAKIMA - Though Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry is fighting deportation from the United States, he still flies an American flag at his west Yakima home.

“That is my flag,” he says. “I’m very attached to it. I’m a soldier and I respect that flag.”

Heeding those words, the 36-yearold Pakistani immigrant living in Yakima joined the Army National Guard and was sent to active duty at Fort Lewis and Fort Irwin in Southern California.

Now, the country he served is kicking him out.

Immigration authorities are denying him U.S. citizenship because he failed to disclose old misdemeanor convictions in Australia when he applied for a visa a decade ago.

Chaudhry – who claims he was coerced into pleading guilty to the crimes, for which he paid fines – says he didn’t realize they were classified as convictions. He alerted U.S. immigration authorities after learning otherwise years later.

He says his honesty is costing him his dream of living in this country with his wife, Ann, a U.S. citizen.

But immigration authorities say he misrepresented himself just to further his stay in the United States. In April, he faces an immigration judge in a deportation hearing.

“There’s not a word to describe the overwhelming depression,” Ann Chaudhry said as her eyes moistened. “It gets you down. You just want to go crawl in a hole sometimes. It’s constant, and people who haven’t gone through this type of problem can’t comprehend what it’s like.”

On a recent morning, Chaudhry sits quietly in his wheelchair in his west Yakima home. His wife hands him a napkin filled with pills he takes to tolerate the pain that shoots from his broken back. He rarely leaves his home.

He arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa in 1998 and planned a life in the U.S. military when he joined in March 2001. A month later his application for permanent residency was approved. But a series of back injuries he sustained during training exercises that required him to repeatedly sprint and drop to the ground while toting a rifle and pack at Fort Lewis eventually led to his using a wheelchair. He was honorably discharged in May 2006.