The Reporter and the Immigrant
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Editor’s note: This true story, from several years ago, perfectly captures the way a news organization and a community can interact. It’s an excerpt from John Sandifer’s book, McGruff The News Hound: A Reporter’s Notebook, available on Amazon.
get a call from an older man named Jack. He tells me about his friend Blas Pasis, an aging Filipino man who has cancer and is going to die pretty soon. Blas Pasis has been in the United States for more than fifty years. He has worked his butt off at menial jobs; he has raised a family that is all gone now. He has been a good resident, but never a citizen. Before he dies, he wants to be a U.S. citizen. That’s all he wants.
OK. I go over to his house and talk to Jack and Blas Pasis. Unfortunately, Blas has already taken at least two U.S. Immigration tests and never got the answers right. His prospects of being a U.S. citizen are bleak, to say the least. He has maybe three months to live. I do the interview anyway. And as he talks he has this little American flag on the table next to him.
When we put the story on the air everybody says, “Oh, what a sweet little man.” Good, I thought, that was it. Done.
Then, among the dozens of callers was a man named Daniel Danilov. He’s a former Russian immigrant and he’s an immigration attorney. He says, “How ‘bout if I was to help get him another Immigration test? Do you think he could pass?”
I say, “I don’t know. His heart is in it, but he’s pretty weak.”
“Well,” says Danilov, “I know those boys down at Immigration pretty well. I bet I could get him scheduled for another test. I would be willing to walk him through the process.”
I check back with Jack. He thinks Blas ought to have another try. And Blas says he would like to try. So, I call Immigration and ask them what kind of questions are on this test. They send over a list of typical questions. They are all civics class questions, but hell, there are 100 of them, things like “Why does the flag have 50 stars?” Then I spot this little caveat in small print below. It says, “if you are 65 years old or older and have been a legal permanent resident of the United States for 20 or more years, you may study just the questions that have been marked with an asterisk.”
I wonder if Blas Pasis knows this stipulation. So, I drop by his house on the way home from work. He doesn’t know about this. As it turns out, he hadn’t done a lot of studying before the previous two tests. He is such a sweet guy, all of a sudden I want him to be a U.S. citizen, too. I tell him if Mr. Danilov can get him a new test, I will help him study for it.
Danilov comes through. The new test is in a week. Now, I go back to Blas Pasis’ house with my sheet of questions and answers and we start plowing through the ones with the asterisks.
“Who is one of your state’s senators?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s Henry Jackson. Can you remember that?”
“I think so. Henry Jahksoon.”
“What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?”
“Vote?”
“No, that’s not on the list. Just think speech. If they ask you, say “speech.”
It went like that through five or ten questions. Then Blas Pasis was tired--really tired. I tell him I will be back the next night. Does he still want to study?
Yes, he does.
We did it for three nights that week, pounding through questions a lot of Americans wouldn’t get; some of them pretty easy, some difficult. The most difficult was: there were 13 original states. Name five. (New Hampshire ▪ Massachusetts ▪ Rhode Island ▪ Connecticut ▪ New York ▪ New Jersey ▪ Pennsylvania ▪ Delaware ▪ Maryland ▪ Virginia ▪ North Carolina ▪ South Carolina ▪ Georgia.)
I told Blass he only has to remember five of these and we need to come up with some way to make it easier. What if we took the three that had the word ‘New’ in them and then the two that had ‘North’ and ‘South’ in them. New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and South Carolina.
We pound through these five probably a dozen times. He does pretty well on some of the other simpler questions like, “what ocean is off the West Coast of the United States?” (Hell, he sailed over that ocean to get here, so he had that one cold.)
Monday, we are at the Immigration office and the officer asks if I would like to sit in on the test. He has also seen the interview on TV. Yes, I would.
So, Blas Pasis sits down and I sit down beside him and the questioning begins.
“Name one branch or part of the government.”
“President,” says Blas.
“Very good. Who was the first President?”
“Meester Washeengtone.”
This is going pretty well, I think. Then they hit him with the big bad one.
“There were 13 original states. Name five of them.”
Blas Pasis looks at me. Sweat breaks out on his craggy old head. He grips his right hand in his left and rubs. “Nort Caroleena.” (pause) (pause) “Sout Caroleena” Oh hell, he’s starting out, but backwards--with the ones we memorized last. Blas Pasis stops. He thinks. And thinks. The sweat builds up. He turns to me as if to apologize. “I can’t remember.”
“YES YOU CAN!” I scream out. Damn it, he’s gonna ruin my story!
Shocked, Blas Pasis suddenly kicks into gear. “Nueve York, Nueve Jersey, Nueve Hahmshur, Connecteecut, Mary Land...”
“Okay, that’s enough,” says the Immigration officer. “Congratulations, you passed.”
When we reported that Blas Pasis had passed his Immigration test, the audience responded with calls and cards and letters. He was to be sworn in at Federal Court within a week.
We were not allowed to film inside a federal court…but our courtroom artist was there. We were outside on the courthouse steps with our camera when he and Dan Danilov came out. Blas had his little American flag in his hand. He waved it like crazy. His face was radiant.
Two months later, we were out covering a fire when we found out that Blas Pasis had died.
Blas Pasis, United States citizen.
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