Immigration: Putting a Lid On It

Anyway, as I was beginning to say:

I responded to Senhora N. Fermeira's cartoon with a chuckle, and left it at that. Still, it got the back of my mind to thinking, which can be a dangerous thing.

Among the few bits of current-events media I occasionally view / read / listen to are various metropolitan newspapers. This article came up via the Washington (DC) Post this past Thursday:

My heart's with those folks firmly left-of-center, and I chafe at sounding like a conservative – even while I recognize that some conservatives can find common cause with a number of things I value. So I couldn't let this one lie, and quickly located a meme that nutshells my first-pass response to that squib:

(Dipping momentarily into the "picky-picky-picky" department: the meme's got the wrong relative pronoun… and the verb should be "conflate", not "obfuscate". Thank you; sincerely, your favorite grammar-knotsie.)

Senhora nurse is a solid conservative – and Calvinist, too, so we've locked horns more than once. She also makes a world-class pudim.

So I emailed my grumble-of-the-moment her way, including that screenshot and a link to the article:

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 9:43 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: The Problem Is...

At least two major current issues in our country suffer from low-brow, cognitively-impaired people's acceptance of lumping too many different things under the same word.

In this case, "immigrant". My father was an immigrant, and so is daughter Portia's mother. Your ex-husband is an immigrant; so were his parents. So have been many of my colleagues and bosses over the years. And you and I are descendants of even further immigrants… and I'm sure that, like me, you and your children support opportunities for immigrants to this country.

What I don't support, and I'm positive you don't either, is entering this country illegally: under the fence, over the river, crammed into a shipping container, and so on. That's criminal at the very least, and playing into the hands of even more criminals.

And that's a separate issue entirely from the rights of people who, like the Schildts and Pauli and Fermeiras and more, came into this country through legal means.

To give these two groups of people the same label, cheapens Fermeira and Pauli and Schildt efforts and labor and struggles. These immigrants in our families don't deserve to be characterized alongside lawbreakers, scofflaws, and (in some instances) parasites. (Oh, and drug- and gang-criminals as well.)

The average American lemming today, dedicated to the Kardashians, self-focus, and mental sloth, easily buys into quick and monodimensional banners: e.g., "Support Immigrants!" Well, I do, and your late in-laws did; as well we should.

I don't support – please pardon me – Juan Wetback coming here extralegally, and insisting he has a "right" here. He doesn't; period. I won't leave him lying in a ditch if he's struck by a car while walking to his construction job and the see-no-evil management that pays him under the table. Once the hospital's patched him up, though, send him back across the Rio Grande – on his American dime, if he's saved any up. If not, the fine paid by his employer will do the trick.

Regards,

Gene

The Lord looked down from the holy heights, viewing the Earth from Heaven, to hear to the groaning of the prisoners, and release those doomed to die. — Psalm 102:20-21

She emailed back:

From: N. Fermeira [mailto:Senhora@Yabbadoo.com]
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 12:40 AM
To: Aging Child <AGeneChilde@YouWho.com>
Subject: Re: The Problem Is...

Quite! Sometimes I can work up intense indignation about it. When I think of what my Puritan ancestors endured, what my Scots-Irish forbearers suffered and how diligently my German ancestors worked to build America, the outrage burns.

F

"It is easier to hide behind philosophical arguments, heavily footnoted for effect, than it is to admit our hurts, our confusions, our loves, and our passions in the marketplace of life's heartfelt transactions." ― Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God

She's not kidding about the Puritans, either! While I hail in part from the land of Cotton Mather, Senhora can trace one line of the American piece of her lineage back to 1600s Massachusetts Bay… beating me out by a couple centuries.

Anyway, having made my own protest on the lousy, conflated terminology, I got to thinking about how superficial the proposed responses/solutions are. Most conservatives seem to favor simply nabbing every green-card -less noncitizen within our borders, and cramming them all into a cattle car shoved over the southern border.

(Having half my genes fresh from Germany, I'm also sensitive to the idea of people in cattle cars.)

So I knew I might be poking a stick at a non-quite-sleeping pitbull, in writing back. But write back I did, folding in some leftovers from an earlier debate with close friend Chuck:

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 7:49 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: The Problem Is...

My father worked to get some German academic professionals established stateside (e.g., he may have been some later help with Werner von Braun and Arthur Fiedler) – and vice-versa, for that matter; sometimes folks want to move their pied-à-terre off American soil (I nearly did in the early nineties… with his help). He had no interest in assisting anyone who wanted to work outside of the law, nor did he foster parasitism in anyone (including in his own children… hear, hear!).

One of my maternal uncles, grandson (I think) of Irish immigrants, was for decades a researcher and inventor with DuPont. And you can cite many more non-scoffers of the law in your foreign-born family and ancestry.

Self-determination is a pillar on which we founded the strengths and achievements of this country. And somewhere it shifted from strength to weakness, over into self-focus, so now we have generations of welfare dependents, me-me-me – even the more-recent "tune in, turn on, and drop out" on the then-young Anglo side, and tribe-think on the brown and yellow side… often a tribe of one.

I suspect that pillar's first fissures formed after World War I – look at how our "The Yanks Are Coming" veterans became bonus-deprived hobos, and those who didn't serve in the trenches degenerated into Fitzgerald's "lost generation", given to swan-diving off Manhattan skyscrapers in 1929 when their aggressive self-pursuit brought the whole nation down around them.

Anyway, I'm not so shallow as to propose that the solution of legal vs. illegal immigrant is simply a quick-and-expeditious "round 'em up, and throw 'em out". Putting real teeth into immigration laws will reduce the floodtide of the Rio Grande; ditto a thorough housecleaning of the INS/ICE – there have to be very visible and adamantly dissuasive consequences for anyone slipping under the fence, and for those Stateside citizens who facilitate with blind eye and padded wallet.

There's the issue of families: I don't want to see them broken up; maybe an illegal's children, if under age five, even if born here, should be sent back with him/her. My sister-in-law recently got her citizenship, after years and years of study, and working when she was able – since we're no longer a frontier nation, U.S. citizenship should not be awarded automatically at birth if both your parents are non-citizens.

Kids older than five: give the non-citizen parents the choice of taking their children back with them. Maybe also give them the alternative of staying here while the children proceed through primary and secondary school, if the kids were born stateside, and only after fining the parents… what, maybe ten to twenty grand for each year they've been here illegally. (Kids graduate, and the parents go back – or must successfully apply for citizenship, having been gainfully and legally employed for some three-quarters' of their time here in the Land of the Free. And if their kids flunk out or drop out, parents are sent packing… likely with their washout children.)

If the parents can't afford the fine, here's your one-way bus ride and a sandwich. Your kids go with you, or are put up for adoption. Citizenship should also not depend on whether you or your spouse get pregnant, and how well/long you can hide afterward, before you get caught. That's rewarding a crime. Any non-native, naturalized American citizen aiding their entry and subsequent hiding should have their citizenship suspended and be fined; if they can't afford the fine, out they go as well.

Children – pun not intended – are an issue; if born here, they're innocent of their parents' illegal entry. But people hungry to be on this side of the river should not see parenthood as protection, and a free stay-out-of-jail card. That's a crime against their own children… and that kind of selfishness and thoughtlessness does argue in part for a loss of parental custody.

I don't know how realistic this is – but the status quo is killing us.

A follow-on question that must be addressed, once that one's well on the way to being resolved, is what do we owe, today, to the descendants of native-born, aboriginal Americans, who were forced from their lands and possessions? Hand-in-hand is the parallel for descendants of African/Caribbean slaves. There are just grievances… have they been wiped out by time, or is the debt still owed?

Regards,

Gene

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen for His own inheritance. — Psalm 33:12

These ideas still felt more superficial than realistic, more broad tarbrush than pragmatism, and narrowly elitist… they're also a first pass, not even a draft.

Senhora nurse's response surprised me… and she didn't call me out (much) on my more-progressive final paragraph.

From: N. Fermeira [mailto:Senhora@Yabbadoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 9:23 AM
To: Aging Child <AGeneChilde@YouWho.com>
Subject: Re: The Problem Is...

You've obviously given the matter a good deal of thought. :)

I'm just shallow enough to believe that rounding them up and shipping them back is a good start. Incidentally, the INS officers I have had contact with were Hispanic -- all of them. Which always made me wonder. It seems that there are two categories of INS officers -- the ones who have been struggling to do what the law demands -- and those who are sympathetic to the law breaking illegals.

No, we do not owe African-Americans reparations.

Plustard, Senhora

"Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it." ― George Eliot

I hadn't given it much thought, in fact. But you can't simply cattle-prod eleven-plus million people southward until you run out of country… these are living people, not stinkbugs that have infiltrated a history museum. How do we address the illegality of their presence here, without dehumanizing them… and ourselves?

It was time to wrap up our mutual first-pass, non-draft debate; there's lots more nation-saving that needs everybody's attention… and this is just one facet.

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 10:46 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: Flipping One's Lid... and Betters

I've given it some thought – and I'm certain any effort would be tons more complex than either of us can imagine. (PS: I've yet to see you go shallow on anything!)

I've met very few INS officers in my more placid (i.e., boring) life… but I've noticed what you point out, the hispanicity of many of them. I'd simply assumed they'd been hired because they savvy the lingo… I doubt most river-swimmers do an intense course of Rosetta Stone English immersion (pun not intended) before hoofing it north.

I'd be curious how many of the Hispanic officers might be conditionally employed – via a backroom condition: "As long as you haul in at least two dozen fence-jumpers a day, we'll let your baby sister and her kids stay in Brownsville unbothered. You fall short more than once in any given week, out they all go… with you on the bus right behind theirs. ¿Comprende?"

There'll always be crook-sympathizers among the trusties – you've seen it (and I've sensed it while visiting) in the badge-wearing, cage-rattling gendarmes. [Part of friend N. Fermeira's nursely career was spent taking care of needy and neglected people behind bars. And I've visited a number of folks locked away, over the years; have you?]  And there are plenty of reports every few days of busted cops, politicians, bank guards, and so on. Look at who gunned down Indira Gandhi, for instance.

Which is getting far afield. So how 'bout, some really dull day, you put on an ICE baseball cap and saunter into the 7-Eleven, or Asian restaurant, and see how many folks scatter out the back door?

  

Just kiddin'.

Plus some mustard to you, too,

Gene

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible. — Hebrews 11:1-3