All we know currently is that Diego Fagundez received permanent resident status in 2013, and he is currently 19 years old, playing for the Uruguay U-20s. His parents emigrated from Montevideo, Uruguay, when Diego was 5 years old. Under federal law, this begins a 5-year (3-year if he marries an American citizen) wait for citizenship, time a soccer player does not have if he wishes to represent his adopted home at international competition. The worst part is that Fagundez cannot leave the Revolution to develop as a player even further due to a residency requirement as part of his citizenship application. A citizenship application takes months to complete, and some people (clearly not Diego) can fail the English test as part of the exam.
So, for the purposes of this blog, let us assume that Diego's parents did everything they were supposed to do to get citizenship. Even with the 5-year wait period, Diego would have become a citizen at age 10, and we wouldn't even be discussing this issue. Now, we have to assume that his parents faltered somewhere along that line of citizenship application or were not interested in becoming citizens themselves. If that is the case, they (and Diego) should have been deported once it was discovered that they had either overstayed their visa or, even worse, arrived illegally. Now, if I am missing key facts of the case, please let me know so I can correct this blog at a later date with the facts of the case.
In both scenarios I just described, we should not be having this discussion, but we are. This is a subject of President Obama's amnesty proposal that was declined by Congress, providing relief to those people who have stayed a considerable amount of time in America after being brought over by their parents at a young age. Amnesty would definitely help Diego out, but there is no guarantee that he would even become a US citizen even with Obama's amnesty. So, let us propose a new, radical solution to the problem: change US soccer policy to match the policy of FIFA for their international eligibility requirements. According to the nationality requirements, Diego would fit letter d because he has lived continuously in the United States since the age of 5. That is plenty of time for Diego to get scouted by the US national team and to receive US call-ups. Now, he could have rejected those call-ups in order to wait on Uruguay, but that would have been his decision, not our government's. I can fully understand him not wanting to wait 5 years to play for the country he's lived in for most of his life. Bottom line: we need immigration reform, and we need it now!
(Most of the info in this blog is taken from this article. Now, am I a proponent of amnesty? No, but that is a solution to Diego's issue.)
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