IMMIGRATION TALKS

Today’s blog does not come to you from any front-page news headlines, any inspiring words from Obama, or from any recent election results upsetting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Rather tonight, I’m more troubled by the story of a dear friend (and fellow Spanish teacher/co-worker) of mine who has had to endure painstakingly long trials as a result of her attempt to legally navigate the US immigration system with her husband. Three years ago, upon getting married, my friend and her husband decided together they desired to make his status in the U.S. legal. According to their attorney (whom they cannot afford), it was legal for him to remain working in the states while waiting for his Permanent Residency Status to be confirmed. Two years later, the law changed, and with his status still pending, he was sent back to Mexico. One year later, his application for legal admission to the US is still indefinitely pending, and my friend is left here, debating with herself over the ethical merits of working here (away from her husband) to support her child, or moving to Mexico to be with her husband at the risk of them not being able to affording supporting a family. The most disturbing part of this story is the sheer commonality of it all. I’m certain we have all known people who have been affected in similar ways by US Immigration Law.

While it might initially seem outrageous to most of us to be sympathizing with any “illegals”, there are many reasons to believe we are creating harmful popular views of immigration under the current direction of our immigration system. After viewing a brief history of our Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureaucracy, one might observe that, historically, the area of Immigration Law fell under the arm of the Department of Commerce or Labor or Justice. Those seem to flow logically with the general purposes that immigration has served in our country in the past. Devastatingly though, upon the year 2003, when we were busy entering Iraq, the USCIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) was altered in its make-up, and placed under the oversight of the Department of Homeland Security (also a newly evolved entity of 2003) (SOURCE) . Does it seem strange to anyone else that the Secretary of Homeland Security, who oversees things like “Counterterrorism” and “Preparedness, Response and Recovery”(SOURCE), also has the largest role in “promoting flexible and sound immigration policies and programs” (SOURCE)? We need to shift away from this perception of immigrants as part of “the other” or “potential threat” population, and rather, view them for what they are; future Americans, future us’. This is why efforts to thwart Comprehensive Immigration Reform need to be cautiously examined and avoided if they exist to only instill fear, thereby limiting the potential for greatness that our country really might have.

In the most recent holiday issue of the Economist, one article argues that “a country’s economic prospects depend in large measure on whether it is a place where people want to be”. Essentially, the more desirable a place is to be, the more creative people it will attract. The more creative people it attracts, the more ingenuity it inspires. And the more ingenuity it inspires, the greater its numbers of productivity and prosperity (SOURCE). “No matter where an immigrant hails from, he can find a cluster of his ethnic kin in America”. We need to stop viewing this appealing nature of our essential make-up as a burden, and rather view it as an opportunity and a definitive aspect of our country’s founding and development. We have all descended from migrants who have made their way to America over the past couple hundred years, and we have all descended from people who have played a significant role in the development of this nation into an appealing place to live. If we want to be great, let’s not start fearing this pattern now.

-E.C.Soria