Buffalo shopkeepers, facing deportation to Iran, plead for asylum
For nearly 20 years, Hessamddin Norani and wife Sedige Khazravi have run a small convenience store on Hertel Avenue in North Buffalo, working 15 1/2-hour days, seven days a week.
That could soon stop.
The couple face deportation if their request for asylum, which has bounced between courts for years, is rejected next month by an Immigration Court judge.
If that happens, Norani says they would meet an uncertain fate in his native Iran.
Norani, a Jew, and Khazravi, a Muslim, married years before Iran passed a civil code that outlaws marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men.
That occurred after the Iranian revolution in 1978, when Islamic hardliners rose to power.
“I feel they will be persecuted upon their return to Iran because of their interreligious marriage, the stance of the government against Jews in general and the apostasy law in Iran, which would subject the so-called sinner to death by stoning,” said James Arani, Norani’s New York City-based attorney.
Norani, who speaks Farsi with a little English, said he has never been a burden on the U.S. government and only asks to remain in his adopted homeland.
“I worked hard, paid taxes, opened my business with my own money and never took one penny from the government,” Norani said with his son, Hamed, translating. “I want to stay in the country. I like my freedom, and I like being around my kids and grandson. I’m not asking for much.
“If I leave, I would never come back. My life would be done.”
Norani, who is 68 and has heart and other health problems, is the lead applicant in the application for asylum, with his wife subject to whatever decision is rendered. If the couple is deported, it would result in a second forced separation from Hamed, and twin brother Hamid, who are 38.
The brothers initially were sent to the United States on a tourist visa with the blessing of the Iranian government, so doctors could examine a suspected cancerous growth Hamid had on his leg. While here, their parents decided to have them legally adopted by an uncle to avoid their conscription in the Iranian army, then at war with Iraq.
The thought of another separation hangs over the family, said Hamed Norani. He lives upstairs from his parents with his Iranian wife of two years on Traymore Street, seven houses from his parents’ City Grocery corner store, which carries American, Iranian and Israeli foods.
Hamed Norani is a recent graduate of Cleveland Chiropractic College in Los Angeles, while Hamid, who lives in Amherst, sells pacemakers for St. Jude Medical Co.
The twin brothers were 14 when they came to the country. Their father couldn’t leave Tehran until 1988, and it took their mother another five years to get a U.S. visa.
“The most important years of our life, we never got to spend with our parents,” Hamed Norani said. “We were going to Williamsville East High School, and while everyone had their mothers and fathers [with them], we never did,” he said.
Hamed Norani doesn’t want history repeating itself. He said the family has gone through its savings trying to keep his father in the country, spending more than $200,000 on attorneys, including payments to three firms in Buffalo, with little to show for it.
“After 18 years of going through hell, this has got to come to an end,” he said.
His parents, trapped between two countries, are tired of finding themselves in no-man’s land.
For years, their case has gone back and forth between Immigration Court, Border Immigration Appeals and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Immigration Court hearing is scheduled for Oct. 28.
One of the issues is whether Norani is, in fact, Jewish. He maintains his birth certificate shows his mother was Jewish, and that the Farsi name for Jewish appears on it.
The family has a letter from an Iranian rabbi, based in Long Island, supporting an affidavit from an Israeli Jew who claims to be related to Norani. Norani attends Saranac Synagogue in North Buffalo, and a congregant, Kallman Sull, has written a letter of support for Norani, urging “a tragedy be averted.”
Ironically, Arani fears that if Norani returns to Iran, his client will be accused of being a Jewish spy for Israel.
Vince Caruso, owner of nearby Caruso Imports, said it would be an injustice for the Noranis to be deported after all these years.
“They are very polite people, good people. A lot of people know them and feel [their deportation] would be an injustice.”
The family is holding its collective breath, hoping, finally, that the deportation case will be put to rest and their parents can become full-fledged citizens.
Arani, the immigration law attorney, is also hopeful.
“I come from Iran, and am very familiar with Iranian laws. This is one of the strongest cases I have had. I will be terribly disappointed, as an attorney and a human being, to see these people forced to return to their homeland.”
