He married his sweetheart, Linda, in Elko, had two daughters, settled in a home in Murray, worked nights, played guitar in a band.
Then last year, Cid and his wife of 40 years went on a cruise to Hawaii. And suddenly, his faded green card was a problem. Not the picture of a striking "boy from Ipanema" with a swath of black hair. The card, issued June 4, 1965, in Las Vegas, had no expiration date.
The semiretired couple were detained. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agents debated whether to require Sanfelippo to fill out an application for new documents and pay $260 on the spot. In the end, they let Cid go.
And Cid decided it was time to make his home his country, too.
"It's time," says Linda. "It was probably time 35 years ago. But you get busy. It just never came up."
Saturday, Cid and Linda Sanfelippo sat anxiously at a table in the offices of Poder Para La Familia Hispana on Redwood Road. At a last-minute immigration workshop, dozens of legal U.S. residents filled out sheaves of paperwork trying to meet a postmark deadline before fees go up Monday.
This is what U.S. immigration policy has become: a mad dash to the post office to save $300.
Starting Monday, the fee to apply for citizenship will go from $400 to $675. The cost of applying for residency will jump 211 percent, from $325 to $1,010. Immigration officials insist the fees will cover the growing cost of processing immigration documents. But critics say the price hike actually discourages immigrants who are trying to follow the rules.
In advance of Monday's fee increase, citizenship and residency applications have surged - by 70 percent in Utah over last year. Nationwide, The New York Times reported, the agency collected 115,000 applications in May, compared with 66,000 last December.
Cid's going all the way; no more green card for him.
It's about more than saving a buck. Even America's legal immigrants feel vulnerable. Congress and the president are unable to agree on an immigration reform package. And in the meantime, state lawmakers are thinking up new and creative ways to yank immigrant benefits - driving privilege cards and resident college tuition perennially are at risk in Utah - created in a gentler time.
"The climate has changed," says Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah and coordinator of a series of immigration workshops last week. "Obviously, the fee is a factor [this week]. But the anti-immigrant sentiment in the country is a factor too."
The only protection is full citizenship - or as close as you can get to it. Yapias and immigration attorneys walked the nervous crowd through the process. Have you been a member of the Communist Party? Ever associated with the Nazi government in Germany? Ever been arrested? Been a "habitual drunkard"?
Cid periodically rifled through a small bundle of documents for reassurance: his Brazilian passport, his Selective Service card (from 1965), that faded green card. The Sanfelippos hope they don't need their long-lost marriage license; it's packed away somewhere in her mother's things.
If they "pass," each of the applicants will embark on a months-long quest - interviews and FBI background checks, civics tests and English lessons.
Yapias intends to be there for all of it. "From now on, you're part of our family," he says.
Nov. 8, 2008, is his personal deadline.
"I just have one request," he says. "I don't care which party - Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian - but the important thing is that you register to vote."
No explanation necessary.
walsh@sltrib.com
