By EDMUND M. SILVESTRE

Sally Jimenez’s plight tugs at the heartstrings.
While her husband was dying of kidney cancer in the Philippines in 2002, she was stuck in Rye, N.Y. With her green card application pending, She was not allowed to leave the United States or her employment petition will be forfeited.

On Nov. 6 of that year, Jimenez’s husband, Danny, 49, died after he bade his wife a weak goodbye on the phone and she couldn’t do anything but cry on the other line.

“I was so helpless that I felt like I was losing my mind,” recalled Jimenez, 44, who works as a personal assistant to a wealthy real estate investor. “He begged me not to come home whatever happens to him. He said the future of our children should come first.”

In January 2005, Jimenez was granted her permanent resident card (green card) and immediately booked a February flight to Manila — her first visit to the Philippines after 10 long years.

Upon arrival at the airport, Jimenez went straight to the grave of her husband in San Pablo, Laguna. With her sister and two of her children on her side, she broke down at her husband’s tombstone.

“The pain, the anguish, the fear, they all came back,” Jimenez told the Filipino Reporter after her return to New York in April. “I had the same feeling when he died while talking to me on the phone, but this time I was there on his side. It’s like I found a closure. There was peace afterwards.”

Jimenez came to the U.S. in 1997 and overstayed. With the help of her employer, she adjusted her status under an immigration law called the LIFE Act, which allowed undocumented aliens to change their status without leaving the country.

“We sacrificed for many years for my legalization,” she said. “It came a little too late, but I know this would make Danny happy because our children will have a better future. He was my first love, my first boyfriend and I miss him so much.”

Before moving to the U.S. in 1997, Jimenez, her husband and their three children were living in Amman, Jordan. She worked as a front office cashier for eight years at Amman Intercontinental Hotel before joining the Philippine Embassy in Amman as secretary for another eight years. Danny was manager of the American Embassy Club at the U.S. Embassy in Amman and worked there for almost 20 years. He was also a preacher at the Filipino Christian Fellowship.

In the U.S., Jimenez held menial jobs like babysitting and nearly moved to Canada until she met her current employer, Edward Pollack, who was impressed by her hard work and dedication and sponsored her.

Danny applied for a U.S. visa repeatedly, but was turned down every time. Desperate to be with his wife who found a job for him as a cook at a Connecticut restaurant, he resigned from his job in Amman, brought their children to the Philippines, and flew to London by himself in hopes of speeding up the process of his visa at the U.S. Embassy there.

It was then when Danny began urinating blood and was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He went back to the Philippines and underwent two major operations. Jimenez’s employer, Pollack, helped with their medical bills.

In March 2002, Danny’s cancer metastasized and he suffered multiple organ dysfunction. When Danny’s doctors in Manila recommended medical treatment in the U.S., Jimenez immediately wrote to President George W. Bush and several New York legislators to secure an emergency visa for Danny on humanitarian grounds.

The U.S. Embassy in Manila, through Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, said there was a very little chance that Danny could qualify for a visitor visa since his wife is an undocumented worker in the U.S. waiting for her adjustment of status and that Danny’s medical condition “may raise public charge issues.”

The Embassy also discouraged Jimenez from applying for parole to be on her husband’s side. Ricciardone said that “due to Congressional mandates, ‘advance paroles’ are granted much more sparingly than they were a year ago.”

In July 2004, Jimenez’s eldest son, John Daniel, now 20, followed his mother on a student visa and took up fine arts at Westchester Community College. “My father asked me to take care of my mom and my younger brother and sister,” John Daniel told the Reporter. “I promised him I will.”

For now, Jimenez is hoping to be reunited with her two other children, John Christian, 16, and Sarah Dane, 11, whom she petitioned immediately after obtaining her green card in January.

“The saddest part of my visit was when I had to leave my two children again,” Jimenez shared. “I kept on crying, while my children tried not to cry in front of me. But somebody told me they also cried when I was gone.”

“Hopefully, by next year, they will be here with us,” she said, “at di na kami magkakahiwa-hiwalay ulit (and we won’t be separated again from each other).”