Incurable disease and an apparent immigration dead-end are forcing the incoming lead teacher at the Emil Fries School of Piano Technology for the Blind to drop her plans and head back to Canada later this month.
The U.S. government’s refusal to grant Lori Amstutz the legal permanent resident status she once enjoyed — known as a green card — appears to be the result of her American husband’s inability to work due to accelerating multiple sclerosis. Because he can’t earn an income, he can’t be her American-citizen sponsor here. Without sponsorship, she can’t legally earn an income here either.
There is no health- or disability-based exception to these immigration rules, according to Vancouver immigration attorney Mercedes Riggs, who has counseled the couple. Riggs said their only option appears to be to find yet another co-sponsor who can guarantee that Lori Amstutz won’t become a burden on American taxpayers.
That’s not going to happen at this point, the Amstutzes said. Harold is too sick and the couple is running out of money after living without pay for months.
The good news for the Amstutzes is that they have family to return to and a successful piano-tuning business to revive back in Calgary, Alberta. The bad news for Vancouver is that the so-called Piano Hospital must restart an international search for a new director of instruction.
“I can’t even begin to tell you what a huge blow it is to us,” executive director Cheri Martin wrote in an email. “She is so awesome and we had such great plans for where we were going to take the school. … Now I am back at square one. I am trying hard to remain optimistic.”
Director of instruction at a musical-vocational school for the visually impaired is a uniquely tough position to fill, Martin added. “We searched long and hard for the right person. She’s not taking someone else’s job. This is so specialized.”
The Amstutzes appealed to their local congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, and were only told to “get in line,” Lori Amstutz said. Herrera Beutler’s office told The Columbian that it could not comment on the case.
When Martin reached out to others in the local congressional delegation, she said, she was firmly told to let the Amstutzes deal with their own problem.
“I got slapped on the hand,” Martin said. “I was told, it’s already been brought up, this won’t do any good.”
Vancouver connection
Lori Amstutz, 55, a Canadian native and a 2007 graduate of the Piano Hospital, returned here last year with husband, Harold, 53, to become director of instruction at the homegrown Vancouver nonprofit, which trains blind and visually impaired people to be piano tuners and technicians. It’s a unique school that raises some revenue by refurbishing and reselling used pianos from offices and a showroom at 2510 E. Evergreen Blvd. — but piano sales is a slow and not terribly lucrative business, Martin said. The place is always struggling, she said.
So the Piano Hospital was thrilled to win a grant of $78,963 from the Gibney Family Foundation of Vermont to help pay for a two-year teaching transition. Don Mitchell, who has been director of instruction at the school for nearly a half-century, is ready to retire, and Martin and her board of directors conducted a search and settled on Amstutz.
Amstutz said she had a green card from 1993 until 2008, but she never became a U.S. citizen.
Harold used to be the pastor of the Laurelwood Baptist Church in Vancouver, and Lori used to work as an office manager. But she lost that job because of darkening eyesight — an inherited, degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa. That’s when the Piano Hospital’s Mitchell started reaching out to her and “wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Amstutz said.
Mitchell had heard about the church wife who was losing her sight — and played beautiful piano. It seemed like a perfect fit.
Amstutz attended and graduated from the Piano Hospital; then she and her husband went back to Calgary, where she launched her own successful business, Amstutz Piano Tuning. Business acumen is part of what Amstutz has offered her Piano Hospital students since she arrived, she said.
“What this school does is open up a whole world of successful employment possibilities for people who have been hanging around the sidelines,” Amstutz said. Piano tuning is one of the few fields where visual disability just might be an advantage, she said, because “it seems like people have extra trust in a blind person to tune their piano.”
Disease and poverty
When Amstutz was offered the position — but didn’t have a green card — she and Harold stayed put in Calgary while pursuing normal immigration channels. Once they started hearing some incrementally encouraging results they moved to Vancouver in November.
But the green card never materialized. Amstutz and the school kept everything legal by making her an unpaid volunteer. The Amstutzes figured that might last a couple of months.
“She has treated this 100 percent like a job while she has been 100 percent volunteering,” Martin said. “She is just so awesome. But there’s only so long you can do that.”
Harold Amstutz has dual citizenship in Canada and the U.S. “He filed the paperwork to sponsor me,” Lori said. “We gave them every piece of paper they asked for. We refiled and refiled.”
According to U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization Services, poverty guidelines apply to potential sponsors who must show that immigrants “have adequate means of financial support and are not likely to rely on the U.S. government for financial support.” In the case of the two-person Amstutz household, that guideline is 125 percent of the current poverty line — or $20,025 annually.
“The bottom line appears to be that he needs to be making an income in order to sponsor me,” Lori said. “In order to sponsor someone you need to be making a valid living.”
In other words: Lori Amstutz, who has an incurable disease, cannot work legally in the U.S. — because her husband, who has an incurable disease, cannot work at all. Now, coming up with contingency plans is too difficult, and their Canadian home is beckoning, she said.
“I’m sure if we had time and money we could win this fight,” Amstutz said, “but the underlying issue is now my husband’s health. We don’t want to be without family support.”
Heading home
The Piano Hospital held a commencement ceremony for this year’s graduating class Friday in the Emil Fries Auditorium of the Washington State School for the Blind. Mitchell, who is 67, will continue as director of instruction for a good while longer than he meant to, Martin said — perhaps another couple of years.
The Amstutzes plan to leave for Calgary by the end of the month. They have nothing but gratitude for the Piano Hospital and their immigration attorney.
“We’ve been self-supporting since November,” Lori Amstutz said. “Our attorney is suggesting, if everything went perfectly, it could be another six months. We can’t play this game that long.”
“We joyfully accepted the opportunity to come here and be part of the school. We gave it the good college try and we’re not bitter or upset,” said Harold Amstutz. “We’re frustrated with the glacial speed of government, but we’re very grateful for all the encouragement we’ve gotten.”
Lori Amstutz said she knows that leaving puts the school in a difficult situation. “I’m not American, so I guess I can’t be the answer to their problem.”
