With Luck, Amnesty, She’ll Be a Citizen at Age 104

Six decades after she first entered the United States, a 98-year-old Mexican woman received a temporary residency card. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials in Harlingen, Tex., said they hoped that younger immigrants would follow the example of Clara Escobedo de Martinez and apply for amnesty before the deadline next May. Officials said she was the oldest person known to apply for amnesty since the 1986 immigration law went into effect. “I feel very, very proud,” the petite great-grandmother told four generations of her family, fellow immigrants and INS officials who gathered to share a cake baked in her honor at the Rio Grande Valley amnesty center in Harlingen. Escobedo was born Sept. 12, 1889, in the state of Nuevo Leon and lives in nearby Brownsville, Tex. She first entered the United States in 1927. She may apply for permanent residency within 18 months and will be eligible for U.S. citizenship when she is 104. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the INS processed the application of the 1 millionth immigrant to seek legal status under the amnesty program. Martin Hernandez, 30, a native of Mexico City who has lived in Chicago since he entered the United States in 1980, received a replica of the Statue of Liberty.

--Thomas Olding is a veteran of father-daughter dances at Cincinnati’s Mother of Mercy High School. Erin, his date for Friday, will be the ninth daughter he has taken to the dance. Olding, 60, took daughter Mary to the dance in 1967. In the years since, he has escorted Theresa, Jane, Patty, Sue, Barbara, Fran and Chris. Although the youngest daughter will soon graduate, Olding will likely keep on dancing. The school has alumni dances every four years. “Last year was the alumni dance, and he took all nine of them,” his wife, Martha, said. They also have three sons.

--A little girl in search of adventure got a free round trip to Australia by tagging along with a woman who befriended her, a Lufthansa airline spokesman said. Nuron Oruc, 11, slipped onto a jumbo jet Saturday that flew from Frankfurt, West Germany, to Melbourne and was returned Tuesday, Stefan Hilscher said. Her father is one of West Germany’s Turkish “guest workers” and the family lives in Hanau, east of Frankfurt. The girl apparently walked through one preflight checkpoint with a Turkish-speaking woman she met and then mingled with crowds to get through other checks. Lufthansa will pay the $4,117 cost of the trip, Hilscher said.