Q: I’M A PERMANENT U.S. RESIDENT. My husband and I got in a fight, and I was in jail for 24 hours. The case was dismissed. Now I want to travel to my home country. When I return to the States, will I be sent back on the next flight?
When it comes to immigration, nothing is ever simple. But Allan Wernick does his best to make it so.
A lawyer with a passion for community activism, Wernick, 48, is an advice columnist for the New York Daily News, a tenured law professor, an author and a consulting attorney. His mission: to help new and would-be Americans understand the maddening intricacies of immigration law.
Wernick’s weekly Q&A column has made him the “Dear Abby” of New York’s immigrants, many of whom can’t afford lawyers. It typically addresses questions concerning families, employers and marriages -- “human problems complicated by immigration problems,” he says. Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman praises Wernick. “He’s been an excellent writer for the paper in a city where immigration issues are really important,” Zuckerman told Stanford.
In explaining the nightmarish labyrinth of immigration rules and procedures, Wernick tries to keep his answers basic:
A: I doubt you’ll have trouble. . . . Here’s the routine. Go to police headquarters. . . . That’s the big red-brick building near the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Apply for a good conduct certificate. . . . Then, get a certificate of disposition from the criminal court clerk in the county where you were arrested. . . . Show [these] to an INS inspector when you re-enter the United States.
Wernick got involved in immigration “by accident” in the early 1970s while studying at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and living in a commune near Watts. “We were all sorts of social-activist hippie types,” Wernick says of his housemates. He worked for $25 a week in a local organization attempting to protect Mexican immigrants from deportation.
After law school, he headed for New York, joined the left-of-center National Lawyers Guild and built up a successful private practice in immigration. In 1990, he quit the partnership. “Law was not fulfilling,” he says. “My heart was in community activism.”
Wernick’s projects today include directing a free program that helps college students prepare citizenship applications and teaching introductory law in Spanish to aspiring paralegals. He just completed the second edition of his book, U.S. Immigration and Citizenship: Your Complete Guide (Prima Publications, March 1999), and will post monthly updates on the web (www.ilw.com/wernick). He’s also collaborating on a documentary film about immigrants’ responses to hostility in California.
Culture clashes notwithstanding, “America would benefit from a far more generous immigration policy,” Wernick says. “Immigrants bring a spirit of adventure, entrepreneurship and vitality to our culture and our economy.”
-- Tracy Jan, ’98
