From Duluth News Tribune (Minnesota)
As a Pakistani exchange student lies in a coma at a Duluth hospital, the uncertainty over what happens when his student visa expires — in just over two weeks — remains unresolved.
By: John Lundy, Duluth News Tribune
As a Pakistani exchange student lies in a coma at a Duluth hospital, the uncertainty over what happens when his student visa expires — in just over two weeks — remains unresolved.
“The U.S. State Department is not renewing his visa, therefore he will not be legally allowed to stay in the country,” Maureen Talarico, spokeswoman for Essentia Health, said Wednesday.
But a State Department press officer said it’s not up to them.
“Homeland Security does visa enforcement,” Drew Bailey said from Washington. “We don’t enforce visas.”
Muhammad Shahzaib Bajwa, 20, an anthropology and sociology student at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, was a passenger in a 2000 Subaru Forester that struck a deer just south of the state Highway 210 exit off Interstate 35 on Nov. 13. He was taken to Community Memorial Hospital in Cloquet. He then went into cardiac arrest and was transferred to Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center, where he has been in a coma ever since.
“A doctor from the hospital called me in the middle of the night,” said his older brother, Shahraiz Bajwa, 22, who was studying civil engineering in Pakistan. “At first I thought it was a dream or that somebody was telling me a joke.”
When he realized it was real, Shahraiz quickly booked a fight to the United States with a cousin, arriving on Nov. 16. The brothers’ mother, Tanzeela Javed, didn’t have her passport immediately ready, but joined him in Duluth soon after.
“The day my mom came over, you had the worst snowstorm in Duluth in years,” he said, referring to the 23-inch snowfall in early December.
With help from the local Islamic community, mother and son first stayed in the Sheraton Hotel and then moved into an apartment.
“The support and the love we got from the people of Duluth, from the UWS people, the hospital, it’s been very tremendous,” Shahraiz said.
But they were disturbed to learn that Shahzaib’s visa, due to expire on Feb. 28, wouldn’t be extended. The hospital was making arrangements for his transportation back to Pakistan, they learned.
“It’s a 24-hour flight, and anything can happen to him on the flight,” Shahraiz said. “We don’t want to take that risk, and we want to keep him here until he is fully recovered because it’s the best medical system in the world. And they want us to take him to a third-world country.”
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