Some pundit asked, “What part of illegal don’t you understand”, as it relates to immigration- which, to me, implied that the issue was so simple that even a caveman could understand.
Count me among the stupid, because I have a problem understanding the “ill” part of “illegal”. It seems more like “ill-will”. I especially had a problem back in the 1950s and 1960s with the “ill” part when it came to children being born without a father being called “illegitimate children”- bastards, as bad word in any language. Now I get the same connotation from “illegal immigrant”- the same ill-will prejudice that led to wholesale humiliation of single mother back then.
Words do not a thing made. Calling somebody “illegal” or “illegitimate” does not make a person so. Therefore, I am unimpressed with the highly charged language being used in the immigration debate. I think that I better understand the nature of the people who create such prejudicial semantics of delusion. Hate language produces hateful attitudes, ask any illegitimate child who grew up without a father, how they were treated.
As for the Great Immigration Debate of today, over which all the presidential candidates seem to be stumbling, this is a case example of how charged up language can obscure the issue.
We must recognize that every human being has rights. It may be possible to deny a person civil rights when they have no constitutional standing in a US court of law. But nationalism is subordinate to internationalism where human rights are primary in the court of world opinion.
There are three problems involved in the US Immigration Debate. The so-called illegal immigrant is attracted to the United States by prospects of opportunity, like 1800 gold rushers to California and land grabbers to Texas. We open the door to citizenship for some and close the door on others.
Nevertheless, there is a large US market for cheap labor- the cheapest of which is the undocumented worker. On the one hand, they are welcome to participate in the job market by some, while despised by others- no consensus but rather a mixed message. We just assume that they teach US immigration law in Guatemala in lieu of mixed messages emanating out of the states.
But practice supersedes ideologues. Undocumented workers are here in the US and they are working. And, like it or not, they are an integral part of the national economy. If they were not, there would not be crops spoiling in the fields.
For many years, it was okay to wink at immigration laws as long as we could get cheap goods and services, and the immigration population posed no political threat. The problem arose with the second generation, the Americanized Latino, born an American citizen with illegal parents. They have voting rights and legal standing in a court of law.
Suddenly, we seem overwhelmed and immigration becomes a hot-button issue- not because of mass migration from south of the border, but because the brown population is growing faster in numbers and political strength than we anticipated.
Closely the border means stopping the bleeding. Mass deportation is an attempt to protect the wound and stop infection. But the wound is self-inflicted.
What part of “illegal” I don’t understand is how we can criminalize others for our own self-inflicted wound. We want to outlaw 12 million people and deport them because we made the mistake of relaxing our borders and lowering the barriers way back when it was convenient.
(Continue Part II)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I finally find someone with a clear understanding of the human side of the immigration debate. Please allow me to share the following with you. It is a short summary of a manuscript about my experience here in America as an "Illegal Alien". I have also included an excerpt of my experiences as a student at Princeton University with the Afro-American community.
America is still the land of immigrants. Newcomers to our shores constantly enrich our culture and contribute their vision and skills to our society. In large measure, they make our nation what it is.
Not all of them arrive with a visa.
Illegal Alien tells a story both typical and extraordinary of one undocumented alien in America. From the hazardous environment that inspired his family’s desire to come to America, to the fear of deportation and the struggle of assimilation in the United States, to surprise opportunities for naturalization and success in the heart of American social institutions, Illegal Alien portrays the history of Colombian American Harold Fernandez with truth and poignancy. In the process it causes the reader to reflect on what it means that millions of other immigrants documented and otherwise, are streaming into America every year.
The story begins in one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Medellín, Colombia—a city that was center stage for the growth of the infamous Medellín cartel headed by drug lord Pablo Escobar. It details the struggles of Fernandez’s family in a place where the only people who became financially successful were those who took part in drug trafficking. It further provides a vivid description of daily life and violence in a town held hostage by the ruthless gangs, hired assassins, and other criminals associated with the drug cartels. The author played soccer on the same streets where children around his own age were killing each other.
The author as a child (wearing cowboy hat) with his brother, his best friend, his grandmother, and an infant cousin. Both the best friend and the cousin were later killed in violent crimes related to the drug trade in Medellín.
When Fernandez was thirteen, his parents initiated a secret plan to smuggle him and his brother into the United States, where the parents had already settled illegally. He traveled to the Bahamas in a plane among other undocumented immigrants pretending to be tourists, with the intention of crossing the water in a small boat to the coast of Florida. A trip that usually took three days was extended into a two-week ordeal on the small island of Bimini before Fernandez could embark on a dramatic six-hour journey in the waters of the Bermuda Triangle during the hurricane month of October 1978.
For the nine years that Fernandez lived in America as an Illegal Alien, he experienced many struggles and conflicts. While living an underground existence, legally speaking, the young man found inspiration and motivation to improve his life. Living with his family in New York, he learned English, excelled in school, athletics, and the Boy Scouts, and graduated as the valedictorian in his high school class. When applying for admission to college, he needed to use a forged Social Security card and green card, but his deception worked: he was accepted into Princeton University.
The author (left) with his younger brother Byron after going to the airport to pick up the youngest brother, Marlon. Since the two older boys were living in the United States as undocumented aliens, their mother required them to wear their Boy Scout uniforms to the airport so as to make them less liable to arouse the suspicion of immigration officials.
While the author was at Princeton, the dean of foreign students discovered that the student was an undocumented alien. The school’s administration met over a period of several weeks to discuss the fate of this student who had broken Princeton’s honor code by lying about his legal status on his admission application. In the end, the university granted him a pardon and decided to keep him in the student body. The process of gaining legal residency involved support from President Ronald Reagan, New Jersey’s governor Thomas Kean, and Senator Bill Bradley. After all the turmoil was over, Fernandez’s university career was capped by Princeton’s awarding him the highest distinction given to a graduating senior.
During his university years, Fernandez decided to pursue a career in medicine and surgery. Much of the motivation for this decision came from his early experiences in Colombia and from the values and advice he received from his grandmothers. After studying at Harvard Medical School, he completed his training to become a surgeon in one of the most intense medical environments in the world: New York’s Bellevue Hospital. For two years, he spent nearly every waking hour in the wards and operating rooms of the hospital, treating patients ranging from the famous to the indigent.
Graduation from Harvard Medical School
Today Fernandez is one of the most respected heart surgeons practicing in the New York area. He also participates in numerous volunteer activities to improve the cardiovascular health of people in his community. And so this man who has received so much from his new homeland now gives back in equal measure. In Illegal Alien he argues through his own example why America should take a more generous attitude toward immigrants even as he expresses a fierce patriotism for the land of freedom that has welcomed him in.
Here is the excerpt from the manuscript:
I arrived on campus two weeks before the rest of the entering class of students. The university realized that there were some students who might need special attention and instruction prior to the start of classes. This brief summer program was designed to introduce and orient specific student groups to the rigorous academic demands of life at Princeton. For example, student athletes, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, or students from families where no one had attended college before. It was not mandatory to attend, but I decided that it could not hurt. There was some light academic work during this time, but most of the time was spent on getting oriented to the school, to college life in general, and developing industrious study habits.
In hindsight, this program was fruitful because of the friendships that I cultivated, especially among a group of mostly African-American and Hispanic students, who would form my close circle of friends during the fours years at Princeton. One special person was Tina Harris.
I saw Tina on her first day at Princeton as she arrived in a station wagon loaded with all her personal possessions. She had traveled from Indianapolis with her parents to begin her Princeton life. As the car approached the dorm, it stopped briefly by my side, and they asked for directions to Brown Hall. I directed them and was taken aback by the beautiful young lady who was sitting next to her father in the front seat of the car. Tina was also attending the program because she was the first person in her family to go to college. Little did I suspect that she would become my closest and most beloved friend. She was the angel who guided me through my most difficult times in school, and taught me, by example, how to open up my life to God. Tina was more than just my friend, she was the girl that I fell in love with from the first time that I saw her. Tina was an intelligent African-American young lady who had broken many barriers to come this far. She was an immensely talented musician with the voice of an angel. She introduced me to Gospel music, which I found appealing because it had the same elements of faith, oppression, struggle, and rhythm that I treasured in my own music from Latin America. She became one of those few people in life to whom you always feel deeply indebted to because they changed the course of your existence in a positive way.
I learned a lot from Tina, as well as from many of my other friends in the African-American community. We shared that sense of urgency and desire to succeed that is imprinted by parents who want your life to be better. I had lived in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. I had learned superficially, as most of us do in America, of the struggles and experience of Blacks in America. I knew the basics with regards to slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. At Princeton, I became a close friend of several African-American students and administrators who became personal examples of success—academically, socially, and religiously. At times, I was embarrassed that I knew so little of the African-American experience throughout the history of this country. I learned from Tina how to open up to Jesus Christ. My experience with the African-American community at Princeton was as valuable to me as anything that I had learned in the classroom. I derived hope and courage from them. Some of the obstacles that they had to overcome seemed gigantic compared to my problem of being an undocumented alien at Princeton.
Post a Comment