Immigrant victim of ID theft gets permanent residency...

For five years, Adelaide Abankwah has been struggling to reclaim her name, in what the Germantown resident and U.S. immigration officials describe as a bizarre case of identity fraud. Now, she has won an important victory.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service recently granted Abankwah lawful permanent resident status, the first step to U.S. citizenship. "It's good that I have it," said the 28-year-old Ghanaian immigrant. But she worries that her troubles aren't over.
Abankwah was attending Montgomery College in 1997 when another woman arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport with a passport bearing Abankwah's name and personal data. That woman appealed for asylum, claiming she couldn't return to Ghana because she had been chosen "queen mother" of her tribe and faced genital mutilation.
Politicians and celebrities, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, rallied around the woman, and she won an asylum appeal. But a subsequent probe by the INS -- and an investigation by The Washington Post -- found she was really a former Ghanaian hotel worker named Regina Norman Danson.
INS officials have since recommended that Danson be prosecuted for fraud. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in New York declined to comment on whether charges would be pressed. In an interview in December 2000, Danson acknowledged her original name but stood by other parts of her story.
The real Adelaide Abankwah, meanwhile, had been facing mounting problems. Abankwah's attorney, I. Jay Fredman, said her family in Ghana was harassed by people who thought she was bringing shame to her homeland with a story about genital mutilation, which is outlawed there. Her friends here wondered who she really was. Worst of all, Abankwah feared she would have to leave the country because the INS had been trying to deport the other woman. She dropped out of school to try to set things straight.
Abankwah's attorney said Danson may have gotten hold of an old passport of his client's that disappeared years ago.
With the help of the INS and her lawyer, the real Abankwah is resuming her life. She works as a software engineer for a local firm that sponsored her for permanent residence, said Fredman. And she has signed up for college again.
"We were quite pleased that during the holiday season we were able to return to Miss Abankwah her true identity and grant to her lawful permanent resident status," said Edward J. McElroy, director of the New York District Office of the INS.
Abankwah worries, however, that she may face more unpleasant surprises. "I don't know what's going on with [Danson], what she was able to do with my identity when she had it," Abankwah said.