It all started on the air. Boris Palant, a lawyer speaking on Davidzon Radio, appealed directly to undocumented immigrants: Why do Mexicans, the Irish, Poles, Chinese and other immigrant groups fight for their rights, while Russians, or if you prefer, Russian-speakers, don’t do a thing? Call! Respond! Maybe someone will take the initiative?
“I even felt sorry for him,” smiles Tatyana Britvina. “He was trying to help and no one was responding, so I called. We met and started developing a plan to create an organization. I went on the radio and appealed for people to call. So far, we have mustered 65 people. And we need a minimum of 100 to register as a non-profit organization. We need an association. Many of our people do not have legal status, they can’t leave the country, nor do they want to. If a strict law against undocumented immigrants is passed, they will simply be thrown out of the country without any discussion.
“We have to unite. We have to make our presence felt. You see mostly Latinos and Asians at rallies, but no Russians. We have to make it known that we need legalization as well. Sure, we broke the law, but there has to be some forgiveness. We can’t be compared with felons, as some people do.”
Tanya is a Muscovite trained as a biologist who worked for many years at Moscow State University Press, but she changed careers and started working at a commercial bank which eventually went under. She then worked at a similar company and found herself unemployed when that company closed. Her friend invited her to visit her in Washington in 1998. Tanya came and stayed, like thousands of others. Tanya is a widow and her son remains in Russia, where he works as a typesetter. He has visited Tanya twice. He could have stayed, but he didn’t want to. “What would I do here?” he asks.
Tanya now lives in Brooklyn and works as a home attendant. The only way for Tanya to become legal is if she marries a U.S. citizen, but she has no intention of falling into just anyone’s arms.
“I feel like we deserve to be able to work, and then get a green card. I’m prepared to pay a fine and back taxes,” Tanya explains. “Many people in my position dream of coming out of hiding and living in the open.”
Tanya believes that some lawyers and pseudo-lawyers take advantage of the hopeless situation undocumented immigrants find themselves in and empty their pockets of money.
Members of different ethnic groups, including Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Georgians and Kazakhs are part of Tatyana Britvina’s spearhead group. Most are Brooklynites, but some are residents of Queens, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. Tanya believes that there are 20,000 undocumented Russian-speaking immigrants in the tri-state area.
I spoke with several immigrants who have shown an interest in this new organization.
Forty-four-year-old Igor Kryuchkov arrived from Moscow in 1993. He studied law at Moscow State and has, until recently, worked as a construction worker here. His hobbies are photography and web design, which he is trying to turn into his profession. Igor’s main hope lies with new legislation being debated on Capitol Hill that offers broad amnesty to undocumented immigrants.
Igor states: “There are two categories of undocumented immigrants: those who are here on their own and those who have relatives here. Obviously, those in the second group have a better chance of obtaining legal status. I have mixed feelings about an organization for undocumented immigrants. Of course, it should be established, but it will be terribly difficult for it to achieve any results. We just hope that everything will work out for Tanya and her friends.”
Fifty-one-year-old Nina Pukhova came to the United States from Leningrad in 1994. In Leningrad, she taught Russian language and literature in a school, but she didn’t really need to work because her husband made a good living as a naval officer. Her son, who stayed in Russia, is now 30. Nina divorced her first husband and re-married. But her second husband was a businessman who died under suspicious circumstances – he “suddenly” drowned in a swimming pool. According to Nina, this is what encouraged her to leave. Overstaying her guest visa, she settled in New York. Her son came, but he couldn’t settle down and decided it would be better to go back. Thankfully, the policy in Russia has changed and those who leave Russia but change their minds have no problem returning to their native home. Nina, whose English isn’t bad, started working for Americans as a home attendant almost immediately. Like Tanya, Nina takes care of sick senior citizens in far-away Connecticut and New Jersey, where few will go because the trip amounts to a good half of their salaries. Most legal immigrants are not seduced by such opportunities.
Nina could have been granted political refugee status, but first she missed an important deadline, and then she hired a bad lawyer, who turned out not to be a lawyer at all, but a paralegal, an underling who was not even allowed to argue her case in court.
She was counting on a Manhattan lawyer that the paralegal worked for, but the case stalled. Money – and a lot of it – was collected, yet the files vanished into thin air. Some get burned for $15,000 to $20,000, while Nina threw around $10,000 to the wind. She says the unfortunate thing is that our people are scared to report things like this to the authorities, even when they are the victims. Such is the instinctive fear of bureaucratic power. When undocumented Latinos or African Americans are deceived, they join hands and go to the district attorney or to court – they don’t take a back seat and instead demand their rights. Nina estimates that somewhere around 200 Russians have been swindled, but she has been the only one to go to the district attorney’s office at Federal Plaza and complain. The rest lost their nerve and decided not to reveal themselves. Nina had her day in court and now lives under the Sword of Damocles, deportation. However, her neighbor, a high-ranking official in the New York City Police Department, has comforted her by saying that in order for an undocumented immigrant to be physically deported, there must be strong evidence of illegal activity, such as selling large amounts of drugs.
“No one is going to work with one petitioner, even if only for show, so an official organization for undocumented immigrants is needed to defend our common interests,” states Nina. “There has to be an understanding of how many of our people need legal aid. These people must be sent to lawyers who have a real chance of helping them, who won’t string them along and take their money. We have to try to find common ground with other ethnic immigrant organizations like those for Spanish-speakers or African Americans. Jewish centers mostly support their own.. Once we went into a Russian Orthodox church where we felt we were being listened to, but then we were advised to contribute $500 as an offering. And they said this to people who are barely scraping by.”
Olga Martinishen is a 45-year-old from Lvov Region who has spent the past 11 years in America.
“My life is here, my children, my grandchildren, I want to live here,” says Olga, who is presently undocumented. “I don’t want to go back to Ukraine. I don’t have a social security number, but I pay my taxes without fail. I don’t steal; I work honestly, at first seven days a week and now five. I didn’t see the light of day for the first six years, I didn’t go into New York at all – I just worked like a robot. I don’t know how anyone can keep going like that. It was only in my seventh year that I saw how houses are decorated at Christmas. I did see doctors, but only at my own expense – I didn’t have insurance and I still don’t. Who will help us? After all, there are many like me.”
Olga has had a complicated life. Her husband was killed in Ukraine five years ago.
“The Mafia killed him for his money; I’m scared to go back there,” she says. “My husband was a mechanic. He would go to Germany and bring cars back. At that time I was already in America. It’s a lie to say things have gotten better in Ukraine. There are more bandits there than before. The same gang that killed my husband stole my son’s car. I’m glad my son came here: he could have been killed too. I tried to arrange a fake marriage, but it didn’t work out. Now I let the grass grow under my feet. My lawyer has done everything that she could.”
Olga lives in Bloomfield, N.J. Like Nina and Tanya, she works as a home attendant. Her daughter is 26 and her son is 24. She has a four-year-old grandson who was born in America. Olga’s children won the green card lottery so they are already legal. She is the only one left hanging.
“In coming here to support our families materially,” says Tatyana Britvina to the spearhead group, “we work in restaurants and laundromats, at construction sites and gas stations, and as taxi and limousine drivers, housekeepers, home attendants and babysitters. These professions are not prestigious and do not pay well, but Americans value our industriousness, our attitude towards life, our priorities and our mentality. We are worthy of joining the ranks of contemporary America and of being full-fledged members of society.”
