Now Here's a Worthy Poster Child for Immigration Reform

Forget Elvira Arellano, who, as I've already written (see this, this and this), does more harm than good to the immigration-reform cause. If you want to focus on someone whose story points to much of what's wrong with current immigration laws, someone who should remain in the U.S., and someone who is sympathetic, take a look at Jacqueline Coats:

(Jacqueline's) husband, Marlin, a 29-year-old native of San Francisco and former lifeguard, died saving a boy from drowning last year and has been posthumously awarded the Carnegie Hero Award and the U.S. Coast Guard Lifesaving Medal of Honor.

Coats, a cell phone salesman, was on a family Mother's Day outing last year at Ocean Beach when two boys, ages 11 and 14, began calling for help. They had been pulled away from shore by a strong current.

Coats reached the older boy and helped him toward shore. But when he turned back for the other boy, he went under. Two other lifeguards brought the other boy to shore, but Coats drowned.

Jacqueline Coats, who has been in the country for six years, faces deportation because immigration proceedings were incomplete at the time of her husband's death.

Here we have a hero's widow, facing deportation because her husband gave his life saving two teenage boys. Had he been less heroic -- that is, had he simply sat on the shore and watched those two boys drown -- Jacqueline, a Kenyan national, would be on her way to citizenship, by virtue of having married an American.

That's insanity. Jacqueline Coats' only crime is overstaying a student visa -- a debt her husband more than repaid with his life, no?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein authored a bill last year to make Coats a U.S. citizen, but the measure failed. She's re-introduced it, though, and state Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Hayward, has put an e-petition on her Web site to support that measure.

By all means, make Jacqueline Coats a citizen. But while we're at it, let's adopt some sensible immigration laws for everyone else.