When we last met one Kwame James, dual citizen of Trinidad and Canada, University of Evansville (IN) alumni and professional basketball player in a European league, he was fresh from giving an assist to the other passengers of American Airlines Flight 63 in December 2001 by helping to subdue Richard Reid, the “Shoebomber.” The rest of this story details James’ attempts to become an American citizen.
When the holiday was over, James headed back to France to rejoin his team. He had reflected on how much he would miss basketball if he quit, and he'd be damned if terrorists were going to stop him from playing. "You stop doing what you enjoy, and they win," he told nervous family members. "You can't be scared."
Except that he was. In his first game back he barely concentrated on the action, he was so busy scanning the crowd for terrorists. That the AS Bondy players were housed in a Muslim enclave in Paris didn't help. He tried to quit after that first game, but his teammates convinced him to stay on. By month's end he'd handed in his jersey and returned to Evansville.
"My mind was just going haywire," he says. "Suddenly my name is all over the Internet and I'm thinking that people on the street are looking at me funny. It was too much."
Back in Indiana, James did some motivational speaking and stayed in shape. In time, the media found another cause célèbre, and the flood of interview requests slowed to a trickle. But then another slew of calls came in, this time from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, asking James to testify against Reid. Sure, James said, but he warned them that he wasn't a U.S. citizen. No longer in school, he might soon need a special visa to remain in the country. "No problem," an FBI official said, according to James. "We'll take care of you."
As it turned out, there would be no trial. On Oct. 4, 2002, Reid pleaded guilty to eight charges, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Three months later he was sentenced to life in prison.
One image in particular was burned into his mind's eye. A television segment on Flight 63, speculating on what would have happened had Reid been successful, showed a computer rendering of the plane transformed into a fireball. James' emotions whipsawed between a carpe-diem optimism and a crippling fatalism. On the one hand, having cheated death, he was primed to live each day to the fullest. At the same time, as long as a madman with a bomb in his shoe could so easily wreak havoc, why bother?
It was a rough time for [James’ college sweetheart Jill] Clements, too. Even before Flight 63, her relationship with James had been difficult. Most girls from Loogootee don't date Afro-Caribbean basketball players who toil overseas. Her family had just begun to accept James when he came home both famous and psychologically burdened. "It put a lot of strain on our relationship," Clements says.
Compounding the stress, James' immigration status was in doubt. James claims that in exchange for testifying against Reid, the Justice Department offered him a work permit to remain in the U.S. He accepted immediately: Since high school he'd aspired to U.S. citizenship. But after Reid was sentenced in 2003, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) told James that he would not receive the permit. (The agency denies knowledge of a prior arrangement.) Nearing the end of his visa, James was warned that he could be deported. "Plain and simple," he says, "they hung me out to dry."
The INS, while conceding that James had acted with valor on Flight 63, was unwilling to make an exception for him. "We go by the laws as they're written," says Bill Strassberger, spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "We need to be consistent and fair in application."(Emphasis mine.)
I’m willing to bet that Strassberger’s statement elicits a collective and sardonic *snort* in light of current events.
James still had a number of options. One was to marry Clements and apply for a green card. But their relationship was sagging under enough weight without her worrying that he was marrying her for reasons other than love. Another possibility was for James to find a job in the field of his college major, international business, entitling him to an H1B visa. James, however, didn't want to join Cubicle Nation; despite his departure from AS Bondy, he still wanted to play basketball.
Michael Wildes, an immigration lawyer in New York City, learned of James' situation and took on his case pro bono. "Is this the message you want to send to someone who looked down the face of terrorism?" says Wildes, who is also the mayor of Englewood, N.J. "It was a national disgrace."
With Wildes' help, James reached out to politicians, even venturing to Capitol Hill. A member of Congress could sponsor a bill giving James permanent-resident status, but while many pols had been all too happy to pose for photos alongside the "Shoe Bomber hero," none took up his cause. By mid-2003 James was overstaying his visa and was subject to deportation. "It was crunch time," he says. [SNIP]
In the Hollywood version of the Kwame James story, he becomes an NBA All-Star, helps achieve world peace and, of course, lives blissfully ever after. While the real-life plot hasn't followed quite that arc, perhaps it's headed toward a happy ending.
In the summer of 2003, having wearied of relying on others for help, James and Clements were married by a New York justice of the peace, making James a legal resident. He expects to receive his green card "any day now," he says, and he'll be eligible for full citizenship in three years.
Any day now. As of August 2006, James was still expecting his green card “any day now.”
The flavor in the mouth of Kwame James must not be a pleasant one as he observes the present-day actions of some of the same pols as the latter push to grant de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. It would be a great symbolic gesture if someone influential would accidentally discover the story of Kwame James, pull a few strings and grant him full US citizenship on the spot (assuming it hasn’t happened already).
His plight, however, demonstrates how ridiculous our betters are: not one of them could see fit to smooth the way for an educated, upstanding and assimilated legal immigrant who helped to save others from a terrorist; but they’re willing to let all and sundry in from south of the boarder whose background they don’t know. (The Illegal Immigration Compromise has background checks as one of its components? Big deal; with all of the fake driver’s licenses, social security cards and stolen identities which abound in that group, I’m sure that many of the backgrounds will be squeaky clean.)
Life in the USA has become downright surreal.
