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Given that Tony Blair said, when asked about the greatness of the United States , during his tenure as Britain's Prime Minister, that ( to paraphrase) as long as people were seeking to get in and not out, that fact clearly demonstrates the greatness of the United States. It is an honor that we are a magnet for the nations. Immigration makes our history unique and admirable and the management of the flow of people into our country who want to be here creates a complex system of procedures and laws. As with every bureaucracy, streamlining and allowing for common sense to rule the day can be a daunting task.
Since I work very closely with refugees and asylees here at Joseph House and here in Laconia, NH, I thought I would relate one story to give you a glimpse of the pitfalls of our system.
Guli is a Russian, Turkish immigrant, mother of three and wife to her husband of ten years. She worked at McDonald's in Manchester and transferred her job to move to Laconia where she lived with us at Joseph House for a year and a half before moving to Kentucky. I helped this family maintain their paperwork with the State Department. They came as political refugees, with legal status, so they had social security cards, first year immigrant visas as refugees and I-94 cards for the adults to work. Within one year they had to apply for permanent residency. The burden is on them to apply and it is very expensive, costing hundreds of dollars for each family member . They also had to pay back their airfare in a timely fashion that was borrowed for them to arrive in the USA. We filed all the necessary paperwork and their status was "pending". The INS has an online mechanism to check the status but they warned about a nine month waiting period. Meanwhile she had no Green Card documentation for her job, since her original I-94 card was expired. McDonald's waited and waited. She was warned about her situation from her manager at McD's but they were patient. If McDonald's were audited by some organization , she would have been classified as "undocumented" in her work status because she was not issued any paperwork in her pending status. I called on their behalf a number of times to be advised as to what to do, but had no satisfactory answer. She eventually got her status of permanent residency and the necessary Green Card about 1 and 1/4 years into the process.
This is why I am warning all my Law and Order friends, and I have many of them, that once again our Federal bureaucracy creates conditions that even the most earnest and diligent would find daunting. The visceral and xenophobic fear of new immigrants has also been a shadow over our centuries of immigration. Each new wave was considered vile and counter productive , even dangerous to our American way of life. I am looking to bring light and not more heat to this discussion. I have more to say but would like to pause and engage readers in some thoughtful discussion. After all that is what blogs are for, rather than mere bloviation. We get enough of that from the "talking heads" of info-tainment.
Ruth is the protagonist Moabitess refugee whose name means "friend and loyal". Our English word " ruthless" derives from her famous name and means cruel and without mercy. Ruth-Full is a play on words declaring the USA as a nation welcoming the distressed of the world in an epoch hospitality that is the heritage of American character.
ReplyDeleteIs a law immoral if it tears families apart?
ReplyDeleteMy husband, son and I experienced the full effect of some of our countries immigration laws when my undocumented husband was ordered to "voluntarily depart" from the country or face deportation. I was 30 weeks pregnant with our first-born at the time. Our son did not get to know his father until he was two years old. We were very fortunate; we were granted a hardship waiver for him to come back. So many other families must live without their spouse, father or mother for 10 years or more thanks to our broken immigration system.
Dominique Vazquez-Vanasse
In my view, deporting undocumented, non-criminal family members in many cases may be immoral and offensive to God. All law is based on morality, and there are higher laws than others. There are weightier issues at stake. For example there is a principle of law that says if you violate a lesser law to uphold a higher law you are not culpable for the lesser law. The classic example is the fenced in pool with a sign that says "No Trespassing". If one sees a child in that pool face down, not moving for example, you may cross that fence to save the life of that child. In many cases those who cross the border are dealing with life and death issues. Our system needs to be just and fair and compassionate. Violations should be penalized with fines and community service and in most cases NOT deportation.
ReplyDeleteAnswer me this. If Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them, LIFE, LIBERTY and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, how can foreigners seeking to exercise those unalienable rights be cast as criminals. We need secure borders, secured with wisdom, and justice with penalties commensurate with the infraction. The United States is a jewel among nations , largely because of our wide embrace of the nations who stream to our shores and our borders. Let us honor God and His revealed Word and avoid harsh and injurious policies that undermine our national character.