Posted: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 6:42 pm

Niamh

West Indian Mother who wouldn’t accept "No" as Answer

Petra Gooding,her seven year old child and U.S. immigration authorities in AtlantaWashington Reverses Rejection of Extension at Last Minute, Allowing Mother to remain at Bedside of her gravely ill daughter

Tony Best

            The differences between 30 year old Petra Gooding, a West Indian mother in Atlanta , and many other parents are clear.            For one thing while some adults, faced with a challenge of life or death of a child would act like a shrinking violet, the well-spoken woman uses her quiet demeanor and steely backbone to telling effect. For another, eschewing aggressive language, she speaks calmly about her disagreement with U.S. immigration authorities in Georgia and over a visa extension and now that Washington has granted her a last minute reprieve, meaning more time so she can remain in the country at the bedside of her seven year old daughter, Niamh Stoute, Gooding is taking things in stride.            “Thank God I am relieved,” was the way she put it to Carib News after newspapers and television news stations around the country publicized her plight and after she received the good news.Next is the nature of Niamh’s health problem. Without appearing to be an expert on the rare form of cancer, Gooding can relate with clarity many of the details of both the manifestation of Stage 4 neuroblastoma, a condition that spawns massive and painful tumors across a child’s abdomen, often with fatal consequences.            ‘It is a form of cancer that you find in children and it is in the abdomen,” said Gooding. “The doctors describe it as a secret cancer and it doesn’t show itself until it is cresting on a nerve or against an organ, causing havoc in her tummy. Since we were in the United States beginning November 21st, she went through six rounds of chemotherapy. Then she had surgery that lasted for 11 hours and she remained in the hospital for eight weeks. After the surgery she had a break and she recently underwent high intensity chemo and stem cell transplant. This is a very high dose of three different chemotherapy treatments on consecutive days. So, she is trying to fight her way back to recovery from the chemo which wipes out all of her (blood) count. She is very ill and you have to do everything for her.” But that’s not all about Gooding and Niamh.The mother has proven to be media savvy, deftly handling national and local television and newspaper interviews, so much so that she  quickly garnered widespread public sympathy across Georgia and the country for their case of the “foreign mother who may be sent home while child treated for cancer,” stays behind, as a major newspaper put it before the reversal of ICE’s original rejection of her application.“The media exposure really helped because before the stories appeared I was getting a lot of turn-around from immigration and it would have come down to having to leave the country, come back and try to re-enter the United States and get a six month stay,” she said.Little wonder, then, that when word came that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, agency had backtracked, giving her a last minute reprieve which allows her to remain until November her first reaction came down to one word: relief .            “I really don’t know what happened, if it was due to a clerical error or what but they gave my daughter the six month extension so she can continue her treatment but the gave me only a month, which would have meant leaving September 2,” she explained.            Now that the path to staying on has been cleared for the time being, Gooding is concentrating on her daughter’s care at Children’s Heathcare of Atlanta’s Aflac Care Center while thinking of how she and her immigration attorney, Bernadine Layne, wife of Dr. Edward Layne, Barbados’ Honorary Consul in Atlanta, would handle the next application for an extension of the time.            “Niamh’s treatment is until June next year but we have until November this year to be in the country, so it means we must apply again for an extension,” Gooding explained. “We will apply perhaps in September or October, so we wouldn’t wait until the last minute but give ourselves some time.”            Of course, the anguish she experienced over the immigration issue could have been avoided if she had been given a medical visa which allows parent and child to stay for up to a year in the first instance having to seek regular extensions.            Actually, the highly publicized problem arose with original visitor’s visa which has several years to run but which requires extensions.            “No one told me about a medical visa,” Gooding said. “If I had known I would have applied for it.            As she explained, the decision to turn to the U.S. for treatment came on the advice of an oncologist in Barbados . While the chemotherapy and other forms of treatment in the Caribbean country are for nine months, in Atlanta the last for 18 months. Missing in Barbados are the high intensity chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant.            But the Bajans had several things going for them in Atlanta .            The first is the humanitarian nature of the story. Here was a “foreign” mother who simply wanted the best care for her child and she was being told by immigration bureaucrats that while her daughter could remain and be treated, she would have to leave the country in the middle of the care.            The immigration authorities had given her daughter the six-month extension but told the mother she would have to leave.            Terry Bird, a former chief counsel of the immigration office in Atlanta , found the case perplexing. Typically, he said, ICE would allow parent and child a year in the country.“Usually, mother and child would be treated the same,” Bird told a reporter. “Nobody would ask the mother to go home and leave the child alone.”Maura Savage, a social worker at the Children’s Healthcre Center , described the woman’s plight as the “oddest circumstance I have seen.”Secondly, her treatment in the U.S. is not at American taxpayer’s expense.            “It should be noted we have American health insurance provided by husband’s employer, Fed-Ex,” Gooding explained. “And while I have to make co-payments, most of costs of the care are being met by the insurance.”            Then, there are the out-of-pocket expenses she incurs while living in Atlanta . Thanks to the generosity of Barbadians at home and in the U.S. many of her daily expenses are met.            “Basically, I live with Niamh at the hospital but when I am not there I stay with a cousin,” Gooding said. “Barbadians have been contributing to a fund at RBTT and that’s how we are managing. Barbadians and relatives here have also been assisting.”In essence, mother and child are not what officials call a “public charge,” meaning that she isn’t relying on government assistance in violation of immigration laws.Finally, she laid out a convincing case that it wasn’t a ruse to continue living in the United States .“My life is there in Barbados ,” said Gooding who has been separated from her husband and a two-year son for nine months.“We really want to get back to Barbados ,” Gooding insisted. “My life is there. The one thing driving Niamh through this whole ordeal is, “are we closer to getting back home.”Interestingly, Gooding isn’t getting a salary from her Barbados job, largely because of the length of time she has been away from work.