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Piano instructor faces deportation

By Joshua L. Kwan
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Mountain View's Community School of Music and Arts canceled a piano recital for 18 students last week, after immigration officials jailed their 30-year-old teacher and prepared to deport her back to her native Russia.

Yana Slobodova admits she misrepresented herself when she entered the United States in 1996. But her husband, a U.S. citizen, says she was swindled by unscrupulous immigration consultants and has been trying to cooperate with authorities so she can stay in the Bay Area with her husband and their 20-month-old son, Nikita.

"I couldn't imagine that something like this could possibly happen to my wife," her husband, Alexander Makarchuk, said Friday. "She is the sweetest person I've ever known."

Slobodova has been detained in an Oakland jail since meeting Jan. 8 with immigration officials, said Makarchuk, who has taken Nikita to see his mother twice.

The popular piano teacher was ordered back to Russia on Thursday after an immigration judge denied her request for permanent residency. As the wife of a U.S. citizen, Slobodova was allowed to seek permanent residency. But her petition was denied, according to her lawyers.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to comment on Slobodova's case, citing federal privacy laws.

In 1996, Slobodova tried entering the United States with improper papers. Her boyfriend at the time persuaded her to pay $10,000 to men in New York and Russia, who told her they could help her gain permanent residency based on her extraordinary musical talents, Makarchuk said.

When Slobodova examined the paperwork the men later gave her, she realized the documents were for a wife of a U.S. citizen, said Makarchuk, who met her years later.

Slobodova decided to fly to New York anyway and was apprehended by immigration officials but was allowed to stay in the country while she sought asylum as a Russian Jew, Makarchuk said. Her appeals have been denied.

One of her attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout, filed a request Friday that would give Slobodova 30 days to go to her home in San Francisco and say goodbye to her parents, who received refugee status and later permanent citizenship, and to her husband and son.

Maybe somebody should ask President Bush if this comes under the headings of "family values" and "family unification?"

Somehow, I don't think this case is going to make the shape-up! Ya think this husband and father is going to vote for Bush this time?

There should never, ever be the slightest thought to granting any kind of legal status to illegal aliens for any reason as long as there are family members of American citizens still waiting their turn to come here.

That might not be as good for business as the Bush proposal, but it sure is good old fashioned Americanism!