Visa denial hurts effort to reunite sisters
Friends and family are rallying around a Marblehead woman who says the State Department is blocking her attempt to reunite a homeless Russian teen with her younger sister here in the United States.
“Whoever signed that document that denied this visa makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a softie,’’ adoption advocate Maureen Flatley said yesterday. “There’s no excuse for this. . . . It’s just insane.’’
Keri Cahill, a teacher, adopted Anastasia from a Siberian orphanage in 2005 when she was 12. Nastia, as she is called, had not seen her older sister, Anya Turovinina, since they were separated as young children amid many hardships. Cahill has been trying to reunite them ever since.
Cahill has traveled to Russia twice and spent thousands of dollars, including hiring a private detective to find Anya initially. She and Nastia spent two weeks with Anya in 2006 as Cahill tried to adopt her. But the adoption fell through after a change in laws and the bankruptcy of the adoption agency.
Her new plan was to bring Anya here on a student visa. Recently everything seemed to be ready, and Anya traveled to Moscow with a woman who was Cahill’s translator when she visited Russia in May. This weekend Anya was supposed to fly from Moscow to Boston, landing Sunday night.
But on Wednesday, Cahill said, Anya, 18, went to the American Embassy in Moscow to get her visa and was told it had been denied “because it was obvious that she would try to immigrate.’’
“It’s the end of the road. . . . I’m enraged, I’m incapacitated, I feel like my hands are tied,’’ Cahill said late yesterday, fighting back tears. Cahill said she had not yet broken the news to Nastia, now 17, who still deals with a variety of physical and emotional effects from abuse and neglect during her childhood. “She’s fragile enough as it is,’’ Cahill said.
She praised the help she got from the offices of Senator John F. Kerry and Representative John Tierney, but said they have told her it appears little can be done. Cahill also put on a full-court press through the media and the Internet. A Facebook group created by supporters on Wednesday had more than 1,800 members by last night (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=187383332849).
“Senator Kerry is aware of the situation, and we are pursuing various avenues to help,’’ said Kerry spokeswoman Whitney Smith.
Cahill said she had pieced together the girls’ life story via a letter from their mother, who is now in a Russian prison, and by interviewing a cousin of their father during her last trip to Siberia last May: When Anya was 3 and Nastia was 2, their father was jailed for stealing food for the family during a famine; their overwhelmed mother abandoned the girls, who were taken in by neighbors. When Anya was hospitalized for burns suffered in a kitchen accident, they were separated and both eventually swallowed up by the system.
When Anya turned 18, she was left without resources in the coal mining town of Kemerovo, Cahill said. “It’s not good where she is, and she needs to get out of there,’’ Cahill said. “She’s homeless, but she’s staying on a couch in this, like, shack somebody has,’’ trying to avoid people involved with drugs and the sex trade.
Cahill said Anya planned to stay and study English here as long as she was allowed, but “I would never, ever had her stay illegally.’’
“This case has been discussed very openly. To have that decision made at this point is simply asinine,’’ said Essex-based Flatley, who has assisted Cahill for several years.
State Department spokesman Noel Clay said he is prohibited by law from commenting on specific cases, but the general the burden of proof is on those entering the United States on a student visa to provide evidence of their intention to return to their own country.
