· Great Falls Tribune · By David Murray · From the Border Crossing Law Firm media archive.
The Great Falls Tribune tells the story of Anke Davis, a Montana teacher who arrived from the Netherlands at age four and learned, while applying for Medicare at 65, that the federal government questioned her citizenship. Shahid explains how derivative citizenship depended on the law in effect decades earlier, her parents' naturalization, and whether a childhood document established permanent residence.
Davis had spent sixty years in Montana as a student, teacher, voter, taxpayer, and homeowner. Her case became a powerful local example of why immigration status cannot always be identified from appearances, assumptions, or even a lifetime of ordinary civic participation.