Liberians give thanks for 18-month reprieve

Thanksgiving Day is today at Cleo Harris' compact, tidy townhouse in Brooklyn Park.

Harris and other Liberians plan to begin their celebration at churches throughout the Twin Cities, offering prayers of gratitude for the privilege of living in the United States for another 18 months.

"There will be a lot of thanksgiving, a lot of praise," Harris said. "People will even cry. This is like a miracle for us."

For Harris, the extension President Bush granted the Liberians on Wednesday means at least another 18 months of living with the U.S.-born daughter she had planned to leave with relatives in the United States.

It means the money she earns working two jobs as a nursing aide will continue to flow to loved ones in West Africa who depend on her income for rice, medicine and other necessities of survival.

But it also means another 18 months of living on a precarious limb.

The future is so uncertain it would drive most Americans mad. It means crossing fingers while taking ordinary steps such as signing a lease, buying a car, getting married or planning for retirement.

Bush's order came just 18 days before Harris and 3,500 Liberians nationwide (1,000 in Minnesota) were to lose their permission to live and work in the United States.

The permission, called Temporary Protected Status or TPS, was first granted in 1991 as a bloody civil war raged in Liberia. Almost every year since then, the Liberians' fate has been decided within a few weeks or days before their deadline to leave the country.

"Maybe it's just my instinct to believe something good is going to happen," Harris said. "When I pray about something I just leave it ... let it go."

The "something good" she is praying for now is a bill before Congress that would make the Liberians' status permanent and open a path to citizenship.

Like many other survivors of mass slaughter, Harris has learned to celebrate life with a remarkable serenity. While some survivors are psychologically shattered by the trauma of war, others escape with deepened trust in God and extraordinary resilience, said the Rev. James N. Wilson, an Episcopal priest whose own life was threatened during Liberia's civil war.

"They never had the slightest idea during their darkest days that they could be where they are today," Wilson said. "They survived the most difficult times you could imagine -- no food, no water, death all around."

'War made me strong'

Harris, 46, stayed in Liberia longer than most others who fled the violence. She left in 1998, nine years after rebels invaded the country and set off an explosion of chaos and death. Her brother and father were shot. Her cousin was raped. Harris saw more corpses than she cares to remember. She survived days at a time with only tea for sustenance.

One moment, when nothing was left but prayer, came when Harris was trapped between rebel forces with nowhere to run. Monrovia was in flames and the Liberian government had collapsed, shattering all chances of police protection.

"The war made me strong, hopeful, and able to take one day at a time, whatever circumstances came your way," she said.

Harris' daughter, 8-year-old Yatta Cooke, has lived a far more settled life. Her birth here made her a U.S. citizen, and Harris decided as the deadline approached that Liberia was no place for Yatta.

But that decision put Yatta in her own world of pressure. Harris' church offered to help provide a good home for the girl. So did relatives who would be able to stay. (Thousands of Liberians living in Minnesota are citizens or permanent residents and were not threatened with deportation.)

Repeatedly through the summer, Harris tried to discuss the options. Yatta was having none of it.

"Just tell George Bush you don't want to go," Yatta yelled one time.

"It doesn't work like that," Harris told her.

"Why? Why?" Yatta insisted.

That night Harris prayed for strength.

On Wednesday night, Harris was in her upstairs bathroom ready to step into the shower when she learned by phone of Bush's order.

She shouted the news to Yatta downstairs: "President Bush has signed a release. We don't have to go!"

Yatta called back, "I told you to just ask him, but you didn't listen."

Time to lobby for citizenship

Bush's order directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to defer deportation of the Liberians under temporary status until March 31, 2009. It reiterates a point Homeland Security officials made last September when they announced the Oct. 1, 2007, termination date for the temporary status: that Liberia's armed conflict and widespread civil strife was curbed in 2003 when U.N. forces stepped in to maintain order. But last week's delay also signals that the White House heard the pleas of Liberian government officials who argued that their country's fragile stability could be jeopardized if thousands of Liberians were forced to return.

Liberians in Minnesota say that during the next 18 months they will lobby for the bill that would give them permanent residency and a path to citizenship.

But Martha Sinoe, president of the Organization of Liberians in Minnesota, worries that the Liberians' calm and hopeful spirit could work against them -- that they will relax and lose lobbying momentum.

The Liberians scarcely had to lobby on their own behalf in the 1990s as bloody war wracked their homeland. But the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States spurred an immigration crackdown. Immigration mushroomed into one of the nation's most divisive political issues.

Earlier this year, Liberians had hoped their bill could pass as part of comprehensive immigration reform. The larger bill died in Congress, though. And there is virtually no chance that it will be taken up again amid the political crossfire of presidential campaigning.

"Realistically speaking ... nothing gets done, let alone immigration reform, during a presidential campaign," said John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota in St. Paul.

But that doesn't mean the Liberians should "sit around and wait until it's over," said Keller, who helped make their case in Washington this year.

One thing they could do, he said, is to work in other states to build the broad support they've created in Minnesota. Non-Liberian officials from Minnesota cities where the Liberians live and from the health care industry, in which many of them work, joined their lobbying campaign. Minnesota's entire delegation in Congress eventually backed their cause.

"One of the things that was heartwarming about the Liberian story is that the state of Minnesota came out for them," said Minh Ta, legislative director for Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who was an original cosponsor of the Liberians' bill. "All we can say is keep the pressure on."

First, though, Ta agreed, it is time for thanksgiving.

Harris plans to gather with friends for a feast of corn bread, spicy Liberian stew and fruit. There might even be a little wine. There certainly will be African music and dancing.

One sobering effect of coming so close to deportation, Harris said, is "now we know what it is like to be a foreigner in another man's land."

There was a time, growing up in Liberia, when she thought of herself as kin to America, a citizen of a sister nation founded for freed American slaves. From what she knows of her family tree, her ancestors were among the slaves who went back to Africa after they were freed by President Abraham Lincoln.

Now, she is a player in the latest chapter of the intertwined history of the two nations.

"I wonder what the end of the story is going to be," Harris said. "It hasn't ended yet, so we will wait and see."