IMMIGRANT NELSON COUNTY FARMER FACES RESIDENCY BATTLE
By Erin McGrath

Lynchburg News and Advance

June 1 2011
Virginia

With the hot spring sun blazing down through his wide-brimmed straw
hat, Ara Avagyan rode a bright orange tractor through the fields of
vegetables on Double H Farm in Shipman last week.

Avagyan, 41, is the farm manager at Double H and holds an agriculture
management degree.

He was tending to cabbage, kale, carrots and other produce he may
not get to harvest.

“Look at my hands,” he said, holding out his red-dirt stained fingers.

“It is not easy to play with soil.”

For more than six years, Avagyan, his wife Gayane and their two
children, Samson and Lyudmila, have called Nelson County home. The
family emigrated from Armenia on Ara’s work visa in 2003, but their
status in the U.S. is now in jeopardy.

Earlier this year, Ara Avagyan received a letter from the U.S.

Citizenship and Immigration Services that his application for permanent
residency status was “insufficient” and was being denied.

Since then, Avagyan and his employer, Richard Bean, the co-owner of
Double H farm, have been working to appeal the decision.

“We’re in hell,” Bean said about the process. “We’re surrounded by
red tape.”

Now, more than 400 of their neighbors have picked up the Avagyans’
cause, appealing to federal officials to approve the family’s
application for permanent residency status.

“This is not your standard case where you have an illegal immigrant
who is perhaps taking away a job that could go to someone else,”
Axel Goetz, of Shipman, said. “Ara is someone who has built up a
farm. He has hired already. He will be a further producer and not
consumer of jobs.”

Axel and his wife, Anke Goetz, met the Avagyans while browsing
through the Double H Farm stand at the Nellysford Farmers Market a
few years ago.

“They looked interesting to me,” Anke Goetz said. “I talked to them
a little bit and took their card and found out by their name that
they were Armenian and I was planning a trip to Armenia. I started
to talk to them the next farmers market. That’s how we started to
get friendly.”

Through conversations, the Goetzes learned about the Avagyans’
struggles to become permanent residents of the U.S., something they
knew about, having emigrated from Germany themselves more than 30
years ago.

“I think another thing that was interesting to them and to us was, we
came to this country also,” Anke Goetz said. “When you are somebody
who comes new and you meet somebody who had the same experience 30
years ago, that is kind of an interesting thing.”

Concern for their neighbors, who had now become friends, motivated
the Goetzes into action.

With others in the community, the Goetzes assembled a packet of
information that was passed on to Virginia Sens. Jim Webb and Mark
Warner and Rep. Robert Hurt in hopes of getting some help with the
Avagyans’ residency status. Supporters are seeking to get a private
bill passed that would help the family, but so far have gotten no
response.

The packet contained pages of information, copies of immigration forms
and a petition of more than 400 signatures from Nelson residents in
support of the Avagyans.

“They are simply people you want to have as friends and they’ve become
good friends over the years,” Axel Goetz said. “Another reason (to
help) is from what is a feeling of what is right and what is wrong.

Now it is an issue of justice. These guys did everything right. Ara
was here before, legally. He got the right kind of visa. They did
everything right.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services gave several reasons for
its denial of the family’s application. The agency said, among other
reasons, that the newspaper job advertisement Ara Avagyan replied
to did not contain information about wages and job location that the
federal office requires. It also said that Ara’s income in 2009 was
$2,433 short of the minimum income required to stay in the country
on his work visa.

But the family’s supporters say that the federal government changed
those wage regulations after the Avagyans submitted their application
for permanent residency.

The packet also contained letters of support from local residents,
like Gary and Jeanne Scott, who own Twin Springs Farm in Shipman,
a direct competitor of Double H Farm.

The Scotts are also the Avagyans’ neighbors and Jeanne drives the
school bus the children ride every day to school. Samson attends
Nelson County High School and Lyudmila attends Nelson County Middle
School. Both are honors students.

“Ara is a very kind and personable person who has a great wealth of
farming knowledge,” Gary Scott wrote. “He and I often collaborate
on growing.”

Jeanne Scott said small farmers are facing a difficult time in the
U.S. already, without the added burden of bureaucracy the Avagyans
are experiencing.

“When you’ve got somebody with the growing skills and willingness that
he has, it’s crazy they don’t want to keep him here,” she said. “The
process is so protracted. It’s such a shame because they’re great
people.”

Bean said he and the Avagyans will continue to fight the decision.

“We are continuing to operate like we’re going to win,” he said.

Meanwhile Ara will continue to harvest the plants he grows on Double
H Farm.

“I just want to grow things like lettuce and make people happy,”
he said. “When I plant a tree, it’s not one day of work. You have to
see what is going on with what you plant. I want to see what is next.”