An American in every way, except on paper, is forced to make a choice

PRESIDENT OBAMA told reporters this week that once the government shutdown is over, he'll start pushing for immigration reform again. "Once that's done, you know, the day after, I'm going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform," he said.

Super. Too bad it will be too late for Jesper Olsson, an undocumented immigrant from Sweden.

When 37-year-old Olsson boarded the 9:30 p.m. Norwegian Air flight to Sweden last night, there was no turning back.

He left behind his business, his 13-year-old daughter and the life he has built since leaving his small Swedish town in search of opportunity in 1996.

The decision to get on the plane had been a torturous one. For years, he hoped that immigration reform would be passed in time for him to visit his ailing father. Now, he was going back for his father's funeral.

Olsson knows it probably makes more sense for him not to go, to live under the radar while hoping for the long-promised immigration reform that might allow him and so many others who have created law-abiding, productive lives to remain in their new home.

He knows, too, that his father would have been the first to tell him not to chance his life in the U.S. by returning. But he's already missed so much, Olsson said. Birthdays and anniversaries and the death of his grandparents. Missing his father's funeral is not an option.

"I couldn't live with myself," he said.

Olsson broke the law - let's just get that out of the way. When he overstayed his student visa, and then his tourist visa, to start an American business, marry an American woman (he's now divorced) and have an American child, he was legally bound to return to Sweden.

With estimates that more than 4 million American-born children have at least one parent who is here illegally, Olsson joins a growing number of people in the same boat. As heartbreaking tales of our broken immigration system go, Olsson's isn't nearly the most tragic. A report on immigration policy's effect on the child-welfare system conservatively estimates that there are at least 5,000 children living in foster care whose parents have been detained or deported.

How does that even make sense? How do we live with ourselves after shattering so many families? Does anyone really think this is the road to reform?

Olsson's daughter will be cared for by his ex-wife. His business partner will likely be able to keep their South Jersey video-production company going. Ironically, the company employs many American filmmakers in the region and across the country. But it doesn't make Olsson's situation any less heartbreaking, or wrong.

In the 17 years that he's lived, worked and paid taxes in the U.S., Olsson's talked with several lawyers about options he says he couldn't afford. Before making the decision to board that plane, he talked with more lawyers, who delivered the same bad news. He could apply for a hardship visa: He pays monthly child support for his daughter; the business he built with his best friend will take a hit. But other than returning to Sweden and working to get back from there, it could be years before he returns to the U.S., if he's lucky.

When we spoke the day before his departure, Olsson was surprisingly resigned to his fate. Steve Janas, his best friend and business partner, was not.

"Let me tell you about the impact that current immigration policy will have on us American citizens in this case," he said. "My friend's daughter will not be getting her child-support payments, which he has never missed, because my friend will not be making a living. The American employees whom we hire in Philadelphia and around the county will no longer be hired, since a founding partner of the company will have been effectively deported for the unpardonable crime of doing what the ancestors of every single person living in this country right now has done: been willing to work hard to create something in this world, and foolishly believing America would be the place to go do it."

Of course, it was much easier to enter this country legally back then: Immigrants were needed to run the machinery of the industrial revolution.

Today, the bar to immigration is much higher.

"His entire life is in America," Janas said. "What kind of a country would force someone to make an inhumane choice like that?"

This country - at least until our leaders start prioritizing people over politics. Someday, maybe.