Land of the Free...

THE SYSTEM: Despite all the pounding political rhetoric, estimates on the number of illegal aliens crossing into the United States from the south each year range from 800,000 to a million. But never let it be said U.S. Immigration isn’t trying to secure our homeland. Even if it’s one immigrant at a time. Take the case of Flavia Cahoon. She married a U.S. citizen in her native Philippines 20 years ago, giving birth to a daughter, Jane, in 1988. Soon after, she discovered her husband was already married— and never bothered to get a divorce. She left him. Three years later, she met another U.S. citizen and accepted his proposal of marriage. After he obtained a fiancée visa for her, she went to the U.S. embassy in Manila for clearance. U.S. Immigration never asked her about a previous marriage, although her daughter was with her at the interview. And Flavia, believing the bigamous first marriage invalid, never volunteered the information. With her application approved, she came to the United States in 1992 and was married. In short order, her world began to crumble. When she applied for a green card, the examiner produced a letter from her first husband saying she was still married to him. The examiner suggested she divorce him and reapply for a green card. She did, but the green card was again denied. Her second husband (first legal husband), unwilling to join in the fight, divorced her. And so, while raising a daughter alone and working as a private-duty nurse, she began battling deportation. Along the way, Flavia remarried, and her new husband, Bert Cahoon, joined in the crusade. Their marriage was affirmed by Immigration, but deportation proceedings continued. Today, happily married, with Jane on scholarship at California State University, San Marcos, Flavia is nearing the end of the line. A judge has ruled against her, based, in part, on the charge she lied about her first marriage by withholding information. A private immigration bill for her, sponsored by Congressman Bob Filner, is languishing in committee, with virtually no chance of passing. The bill could be reintroduced in the next session, but success is unlikely. And Flavia would probably be back in the Philippines by then, 7,000 miles from her husband and daughter. Says attorney Carl Shusterman, an immigration specialist (and former prosecutor for the Immigration Service) who’s been trying to help Flavia: “She’s been a hard-working, tax-paying citizen for 14 years. If people lie, or try to hide something, they don’t do what she did. The [original] Immigration officer didn’t do his job. He never asked if she’d been married; he never asked about the daughter’s father. As an ex-prosecutor for Immigration, I say let’s focus on the bad guys—not waste thousands and thousands of dollars on people like Flavia, who should stay here.

SAN DIEGO SHUFFLE: Tom DiZinno, who owned one of San Diego’s most successful public relations agencies for nearly two decades, closed the agency in the early 2000s. These days, he’s been working another kind of public relations. DiZinno, who quietly moonlighted as a volunteer with the San Diego Police Department while running his agency, is on the night shift with the National City Police Department as an investigator assigned to white-collar crime.

BOOK ’EM: Will Beall, an English major at San Diego State University who wrote for the Daily Aztec and worked as an intern at San Diego Magazine in the mid-1990s, didn’t exactly follow a straight career path. Beall, one of our more promising interns, moved on to Los Angeles and ended up with the LAPD as a cop on the beat in the hardscrabble 77th Division of South Central L.A. Along the way, he kept a journal. The result is a gritty, stomach-churning first novel, L.A. Rex, just out in hardcover from Penguin’s Riverhead Books. It’s a rip-roaring read that’s not for the faint of stomach. Among the key characters are Darius Washington, a gangsta-rap music mogul who’s more gangsta than rapper; Officer Risley, a rogue cop who works both sides of the 77th; and Officer Ben Halloran, who comes as close to anybody as the book’s hero. In the unedited manuscript of L.A. Rex, Ben kept slipping from third to first person, when Beall accidentally had him go from “himself ” to “myself.” But,” Beall says, “I’m not Ben any more than I’m Darius or Risley. But yes, I suppose all writing is autobiographical. It’s definitely informed by my (limited) experience.” Beall, recently promoted to homicide investigator, returns to San Diego November 4 for a book-signing at Mysterious Galaxy. You might want to bring Tums, but you should definitely buy the book.

BOTTOM LINE: Nobody’s mistaking hookers for rocket scientists, but really. In Oceanside, a woman on the run flagged down two men in a sedan, exposed a breast and said she was a prostitute. She later jumped into their car, saying she had to get off the street “because there were too many cops in the area.” That’s when the two plain-clothesmen flashed their badges and announced she was under arrest.

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Listen for Tom Blair’s Friday reports on KOGO News Radio (600 AM) at 7:25 a.m. You can also hear his radio column by clicking here. Items for the magazine or radio may be e-mailed to tblair@sandiegomag.com.

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