Immigration rules and laws are intended to protect both immigrants and citizens of the US. In addition, many rules are created specifically to ensure that families can be reunited. In some cases, however, it seems that immigration rules end up creating family rifts and problems. That is certainly the case for the Tacuri family. Gladys Tacuri lives in Ecuador and wants to visit the US temporarily in order to visit her brother Leonardo Tacuri, who is in a coma in a Brooklyn hospital after being in a hit and run car accident.
So far, Gladys Tacuri’s visa requests to visit her brother have been denied twice. This is despite the fact that she has three children and a husband in Ecuador as well as a beauty salon business in that country. Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Guayaquil, however, have twice told Tacuri that she does not have enough to show that she will not overstay her visa in the US. They have told her to apply for humanitarian parole with the USCIS.
Leonardo Tacuri left Ecuador 12 years ago for a better life and has no family in the US to sit by his bedside. Dr. Fausto. Vinces, director of Trauma at the Lutheran Medical Center, has written a letter of appeal to the Guayaquil Consulate in order to allow Tacuri’s sister to visit. The president of Empire Rolling Steel Gates Corp, Pablo Pintado, has also sent a letter to the Guayaquil Consulate, stating that he will cover the costs of Gladys Tacuri’s US visit so that she will not be a burden on the state. Even Rep. José Serrano and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand have sent letters to the consulate on behalf of the Tacuris but the consulate is still not granting a visa.
Recently, the situation has become even more complicated since the Lutheran Medical Center wants to send Leonardo Tacuri back to Ecuador, since he should be with family and medical experts believe he will not wake up. Gladys Tacuri does not want her brother to return to Ecuador, saying that he will get better care in the US. She now wants to see her brother more than ever, in order to speak with doctors and to see his condition herself. However, it seems unlikely that she will get a visa in order to visit her brother, even with so many letters being sent to the consulate on her behalf.