Separated Utah family grows impatient

For six months, Johana Thorsted has been waiting for a phone call. That's all she can do.

"They said I'm going to have the answer in six months," said, Johana, who left her husband, Aaron, last August to return to her native Guatemala as the final step in her application for legal status. "They say I need to wait until they call me."

Meanwhile, her husband, Aaron Thorsted, says it's "really tough" to be so far from his family. He's yet to meet his 3-month-old daughter, who was born in Guatemala. Also in Guatemala is his 2-year-old daughter, who has forgotten how to speak English.

"Right now, I can definitely say I regret it," Thorsted said. "I want to do my part to be a good citizen, I want to do the right thing, but it doesn't seem that the government cares."

As a U.S. citizen, Aaron Thorsted first applied for his wife's immigration visa in 2003, but the couple put her application on hold when he was called to serve in Iraq with his Army Reserve unit. Neither thought the process would take so long.

"I'm missing a lot, just like I already missed a lot during my deployment, he said. "I'm up in the air, I'm frustrated. I haven't heard anything."

Because Johana Thorsted had lived in the United States illegally for several years, she faces a 10-year bar on re-entering the country. She had to return to Guatemala to apply for a waiver of that bar. Her application requires showing her absence from the United States would cause severe hardship on her U.S. citizen husband and their two daughters.

Aaron Thorsted said the waiver paperwork was submitted in September. The couple were told it was handed over to be processed in early October.

"It's a feeling of helplessness," Aaron Thorsted said. "When I was deployed she was in a safe environment with friends close by and insurance. Now, even if I went over there, I couldn't change anything."

The issue of immigration is again becoming a hot topic on Capitol Hill this year. And U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon , R-Utah, says there have been discussions about a provision to help cases such as the Thorsteds by providing temporary visas for immigration applicants that would allow them to remain in the United States while their applications are pending.

However, there's nothing in writing yet, said Cannon's spokesman Fred Piccolo.

"There's no doubt it will be part of the final legislation," he said. "We don't know to what extent."

A comprehensive reform bill was introduced in the House Thursday, which would bolster border security and put most of the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants on an eventual pathway to citizenship if they meet requirements such as passing a background check and learning civics and English.