IN THE LAND OF THE FREE: 21 PILLS FROM DEPORTATION

Catherine Caza has lived 37 of her 40 years in the U.S. She now faces
deportation for a 1982 drug conviction. Michael Woloschuk reports.

HOLIDAY, Florida - Three years ago, a Canadian-born woman living in this
small community near Tampa Bay celebrated the Fourth of July raising money
for disabled U.S. war veterans stranded in hospital over the Independence
Day festivities.

Comforting soldiers wounded in the service of their country was the best
way that Catherine Caza, who was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and
emigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was three, believed she
could commemorate the national holiday.

In one week, she collected hundreds of dollars, which bought care packages
for veterans with no family to visit them. ``To be in the hospital and not
have anyone, that's so basic,'' she says.

Today, because of a minor 1981 drug conviction resulting from the sale of
21 pills to an undercover police officer, Ms. Caza lives under the threat
of deportation as an undesirable alien.

Indeed, in June a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service judge ordered
her deported, despite the fact that she has a seven-year-old daughter who
is a U.S. citizen and has lived in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident
for the past 37 years.

The only thing saving Ms. Caza from being forcibly removed from the country
is the appeal she launched after receiving the deportation order. Ever
since, the 40-year-old single mother and college student lives in fear of
being sent to live in a country that she does not know.

``At school we learned the provinces, but really I'm not familiar with the
country. I had to look up where Ottawa was on the map. I didn't even know
it was the capital,'' Ms. Caza says in an American accent thick as a
Florida grapefruit.

``I don't know what I'd do if they decide to kick me out. To be honest, I
don't think I would stay in Canada forever. I would try to sneak back in
across the border.''

Ms. Caza's appeal is based on the argument that the deportation order is
illegal because, at the time of her drug conviction, there was a legal
mechanism called a waiver of deportation that might have saved her from
being expelled from the U.S. Such a waiver was granted when deportation
could cause extreme hardship to someone who had lived in the U.S. for seven
years or more.

However, when Congress revised its immigration laws in 1996, any alien
resident with a drug conviction became subject to immediate deportation,
regardless of the date of conviction. The new immigration laws also meant
that Ms. Caza lost the right to use the deportation waiver.

Her appeal is scheduled for hearing on Feb. 8. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service deports 1,000 foreigners a week. The agency does not
comment on individual cases.

One of Ms. Caza's biggest fears is that -- if she is ordered deported --
she will not be allowed to bring her daughter, Carly, who was born in
Florida, into Canada with her.

``I'm not going to die if they deport me. But if they take my child away
from me I don't know what I'd do. I'm hanging by a thread. I can't even
picture that. I don't want to think about it.''

Ms. Caza would have much to lose should she be deported. Holiday, the small
town where she lives, is located a few short kilometres from Florida's
sun-drenched western coastline on the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most
desirable locations for northerners escaping frigid winters. The highway
from Tampa to the inland town is lined with acres of orange groves. A dozen
white sandy beaches sit within a 30-kilometre radius of Holiday.

Seven-year-old Carly spends much of her time outdoors with her friends and
is burned brown by the sun. ``Please let my mom stay in the U.S.A.,'' Carly
says.

Ms. Caza and her family were not always surrounded by such warm and
luxurious surroundings. Born in 1957, Ms. Caza moved to the U.S. in 1960
with her parents and an older sister.

Her father, William, an electrician who moved to the U.S to seek work,
registered the entire family that year as permanent residents.

The Cazas originally settled in Detroit, then moved to California. The
family finally put down roots in Florida 20 years ago. Catherine Caza was
raised a true-blooded American.

``I was in Girl Scouts, I played softball. I celebrated Fourth of July --
it's a very big thing for me,'' she says. ``I'm very Americanized.''

Like other young women in their early twenties, Ms. Caza also enjoyed
dating. In 1980, she dated a man who called himself Ron McKenna. He was
always asking her to get drugs for him.

``Over a period of nine months, he called my house every day. He asked for
drugs all the time. Eventually, I went out and got him 21 tablets of
Quaaludes and LSD. It turned out he was an undercover cop and he took me
in.''

In 1982, Ms. Caza pleaded guilty to illegally selling controlled
substances, and received five years' probation. But that was not all.
Without knowing it, her ordeal with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service had just begun.

On the day of her conviction for the drug offence, Ms. Caza became
deportable. As required by law, the Immigration and Naturalization Service
began the process to expell her.

But rather than file their papers with an immigration judge, the service
did nothing for 15 years. Instead, it waited until February 1997 to file
their case against her. She received the notice of her deportation hearing
while she was enrolled in a class in American government at St. Petersburg
Junior College.

Had the service attempted to deport her when they first learned of her drug
conviction, Ms. Caza, a 21-year resident of the U.S. at the time, could
have exercised the deportation waiver and settled the immigration matter
once and for all. She was forced to defend herself at the immigration
hearing, which took all of 10 minutes, in June.

``Within 10 minutes, 37 years of living in this country was completely
wiped away,'' she says.

When the judge who heard her case, Rex J. Ford, was asked what would happen
to Ms. Caza's U.S.-born daughter if his deportation order was allowed to
stand, Judge Ford said: ``Some of these situations are absolutely
heart-wrenching. I will tell you that the law changed and there are no
waivers for these things now. I'm not unsympathetic.''

Since then, Ms. Caza has waged a one-woman battle to remain in the U.S.,
where she hopes to eventually become a citizen. From her modest bungalow on
a quiet street lined with palm trees, she has written hundreds of letters
requesting help. These letters have been mailed to every high-profile
politician in the country.

Her biggest hope lies with Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, who can wipe Ms.
Caza's drug conviction from the record with an order of executive clemency.
Ms. Caza's clemency hearing will be held in March.

If she receives a pardon, the deportation order would become null and void.

``I am going to go kicking and screaming,'' she says. ``How would you like
to be told you can never come back to your country? Florida is my state,
it's my home. And if I'm deported I'd never be able to come back.''

Even if she is allowed to bring her daughter with her to Canada, being
deported would mean Ms. Caza would not be allowed to return to visit her
family, which includes her 70-year-old mother and older sister.

``If you take me away from my mother and family, and put me somewhere where
I don't know anyone, I don't know what I would do,'' says Ms. Caza. ``I
don't know if I can take any more.''