She shares a small room with two women in a nursing home in northern China. Aging and in frail health, the Bible-reading woman believes she will be heaven-bound before long.
Almost anything would be better than the hell she's been through.Marjorie Fuller may seem an improbable candidate for high-level attention, but her situation has caught the eye of Ross Perot, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and the State Department.
The U.S. government so far has not recognized Fuller, 72, a lifelong resident of China, as an American citizen, even though her father was one. The Chinese government, meanwhile, persecuted her for decades, perceiving her as a U.S. agent.
Perot and Hatch want to help her, but there is some dispute as to whether Fuller wants to stay in the nursing home or come to the United States. Also, is she living in a clean, healthy environment, as the State Department believes, or in "inhumane conditions," as an American friend of hers reports?
When a U.S. consular officer asked her during a mid-September visit whether she wished to go to the United States, "she expressed no interest," the State Department said.
But nine days later, during a telephone conversation with her American friend, Charles Paglee of Baltimore, she said, "I'd very much want to go, go to America." Paglee quoted her in a transcript of their conversation.
Fuller, whose story was recounted recently in the Baltimore Sun, is the classic "stateless" person. She did not leave China before the Communist takeover in 1949 and now is treated as a foreigner. But she does not qualify for American citizenship because her father, although legally a U.S. citizen, had lived abroad since birth.
Fuller's life has been especially difficult since 1958, when she became a target of anti-rightist campaigns led by Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung. She was labeled an "enemy of the people" and was coerced into admitting that she was a U.S. spy.
She and her mother were confined to concentration camps for 23 years, until 1981, Paglee said. She has been at the nursing home in the northeastern city of Harbin ever since. Her Polish-born mother died there in 1992.
Paglee, a University of Maryland law student who met Fuller in May while living in China, has become her prime backer. He passed word of her plight to Hatch, who is prepared to introduce legislation making her a U.S. citizen.
Hatch, R-Utah, also has talked to Perot, who has promised to pay Fuller's transportation costs and to act as her sponsor.
She told Paglee she wants to go to the San Francisco area, where she has a stepsister and two stepbrothers, all U.S. citizens, according to Paglee.
The State Department says it has done all it can to help her. Officials say she has rejected offers to help her locate her U.S. relatives and to pursue her claim to citizenship.