Houston Doctors Dodge Immigration Bullet...For Now

Lomi Kriel, Houston Chronicle, Mar. 30, 2017 - "On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Pankaj Satija and his wife, both immigrants from India living and working legally in Houston, were abruptly told by immigration officials they had 24 hours to leave the United States. A new policy, they were told, no longer allowed them to extend their temporary permission to stay while they waited for permanent authorization.

The two doctors, who have been here legally for more than a decade and are highly specialized in their fields, were first astounded, then hysterical. Satija had 90 patients scheduled before the end of the week.

"I was breaking down every two hours," said the 40-year-old neurologist who helped found the Pain and Headache Centers of Texas and performs about 200 operations a month.

The couple have never even been issued a parking ticket and pay their taxes quarterly, rather than once a year. Satija's wife, Dr. Monika Ummat, is also a neurologist specializing in epilepsy at Texas Children's Hospital. They have two young U.S.-born children.

... On Thursday, desperate, they called their legislators. They took to the media along with their attorneys to plead their case, wearing the blue surgical scrubs in which they had hoped to go to work. And they reported, as ordered, ready to leave the country, to customs officials at Bush Intercontinental Airport, where they were told the agency had suddenly reversed course.

"Somebody at a higher level has made that decision," they were told by an agent. "I understand that you are physicians and a lot of lives are at stake."

The agency offered the couple three months of humanitarian parole, a rare measure allowing immigrants who are otherwise not permitted to enter the United States the opportunity to do so because of a "compelling emergency," enabling them to sort out their paperwork.

It was an unusual act of grace from an administration that has so far seemed intent on removing as many immigrants as it can, making few exceptions, even for those, like the Satijas, with good reasons to stay."