It's two days after our latest trip to Norfolk and the Immigration and Naturalization Office there. It's a day after finally being able to renew my driver's license - despite a couple of (to me) heart-stopping moments in which the DMV clerk wandered vacantly away, carrying my passport and its latest endorsement - the one that says I'm legal for another year.
Here is an example of the contorted and contracted bureaucratic thinking that, if I dwell on it for any length of time is liable to make me want to pull out my own teeth without benefit of pain relief. Two years ago I had my status as an immigrant legally upgraded to that of 'legal permanent resident' - with conditions attached. Those conditions being that I remain married to Sabrina and continuously present in the USA for a further three years. However, that 'permanent' right to reside expires a year before the termination of the remaining conditional period. How, once granted, can a permanent right expire? Such a right can, logically, be revoked, and it can be rejected. But how can it expire when it's permanent?
But it can expire, and it has. Which meant that, for the time it took for us to petition for the conditions to be removed, and for us to gain an appointment in Norfolk to have my passport endorsed, I was in the country illegally and could have been deported at a moment's notice on the whim of any Homeland Security official who chose to order that I be deported. And I could have done not a thing about it.
I grant you there is a process of appeal in place, to which I could have (and would have) resorted. But at every moment I'm dependant on people on whom I have no influence and over whom I have no control. And while there is a legal framework surrounding the process, there is absolutely no guarantee that that process will work in my favor. At every turn, I depend exclusively on the goodwill of others. Because if some official whose only function is to stamp a piece of paper is having a bad day, he or she may just resort to taking his or her irritation out on the piece of paper that relates to me. These idiots have already lost my documentation once, and it took them a year to recover it.
During this latest episode, I had no choice but to work illegally, drive to work and back home illegally. And I had no choice in the matter because the official process is so constructed in terms of when applications can be made and endorsements created that this 'limbo' period is an unavoidable consequence of participating in the legal process at all.
And it's equally unavoidable that the insecurity of such a position plays havoc with the mind. Every time I've had dealings with Homeland Security I have felt (even with the aid of a lawyer) completely helpless and completely intimidated and completely insecure. In a word, powerless. And at every turn, something could have gone finally and completely wrong, and the life I'm building here would have evaporated in front of my eyes. But, previously, each time I'd had dealings with them had been at a point where I was, at least, still covered by the previous endorsement. I'd been in the country legally at every meeting with them. This was a very thin and ragged security blanket to cling to - but cling I did. This time, I didn't even have that to comfort myself with.
For most, cost is perhaps the biggest hurdle to be confronted - not once but many times. $555 to file the first petition. $750 for the initial medical exam. $175 for the first work permit, and each one thereafter (four, before gaining 'permanent' residence) $275 to file for removal of conditions and to to pay for 'biometric' services (fingerprinting, iris-analyses, height, weight, distinguishing features) and another $700 next year to petition to become a citizen. Total in official fees: $2980. Lawyer's fees: $3000. Plus all the expenses occurred in terms of time off work and travel costs. All told, I estimate that between Hobbs (my father-in-law) and myself we have spent close to $8000 so far, with by far the larger part of the burden falling on Hobbs, bless him. By the time I'm a citizen the whole process will have cost almost $10000 dollars and taken between six or seven years.
And if at any time you can't find the cash? The process collapses and you begin again - from the beginning. That is, it begins again if you can find some means of preventing yourself from being removed from the country while you wait to re-petition, and wait for permission to reside temporarily to be granted again.
Perhaps you can see why, after the trials and difficulties and expense, the sense of being in a place on sufferance, the constant awareness that the life you are making can be destroyed at any moment, for any reason and no reason at all, that I'm opposed to any 'amnesty' for the millions of illegals who pour, virtually unopposed, over the Mexican border every year. Having millions of low paid laborers is a convenience; the work I presently do and am capable of doing in the future makes a real contribution to the upkeep of the material fabric of American society. Without what I (and many others) did at D your electrical infrastructure would collapse. Without what I and many others do at T your blacktop roads would turn into mudpits, your freeways and interstate highways would collapse in ruin.
What do you want? Cheap lettuce, or electricity? Neatly trimmed lawns, or roads to drive your bloated-ass SUVs on? By all means, make wait for almost a decade for their citizenship those whose only economic contribution to American economic life is to harvest lettuce, cut grass, and pick up the shit-stained drawers of those Americans too lazy to bend over and pick up after themselves.
But why delay, and delay, and delay, and delay, those who can make a real contribution, who want to make such a contribution, who want to do so legally, and who have a real, active desire not merely to live in America and enjoy all the good things America has to offer, but who wish to do so as citizens of America who can actively contribute to her life and welfare?
If Americans, generally do prefer cheap lettuce, clipped lawns and maid-service over the real welfare, growth and prosperity of their country (which is something I don't believe for a moment) then they are not deserving of her. They are in fact, when seen clearly and over the long-term, traitors. Employers who don't make serious attempts to determine the status of their employees, and who refuse to restrict their employment practices to those legally entitled to live and work here, are traitors. They put the dollar in their pockets before the welfare of their nation and they ought to be subjected to the severest punishment.
Those who oppose the strongest and most stringent measures to control illegal penetration of America's borders are traitors. America was founded by a polyglot influx of people from all over the world - but because that was so then (when bodies on the ground to assist with the exploration and civilization of America were at a premium) does not mean that America as she is now must be a free-for-all paradise in which anyone who wishes to may come here to exploit what she has to offer as he sees fit. In the four hundred years since the founding of Jamestown, America became first a constitutional Republic and State, and secondly a definable nation. Nations exclude those that are not of themselves. So do States. A nation and a State that cannot defend its borders will not long remain either a nation or a State.
Do I want others to benefit from the good things America has given me? Yes, if they're fit to - and if they can do something more than pick lettuce. As to all those low-paid jobs that Americans simply won't do - or so we're told - their ought to be no job that an American without work is unwilling to do. I drove an icecream truck till I found something better - and was mocked by crack-sellers and childwhores for my pains, for being a white man serving blacks. If I can bear a little indignity why can't you?
America's immigration policy is utterly defective, from start to finish. Allow millions of unskilled, uneducated peasants incapable of performing any other than the lowest valued tasks to stream across your border virtually unhindered while making those who can contribute in high-value areas jump through innumerable hoops at nearly insupportable costs, with no incentive to tolerate these conditions other than their own desire to become American. Desire fails. Willingness to support the intrusive attentions of a generally ill-mannered and incompetent bureaucracy fails. Even the dream of becoming an American can die. And with its death, who knows what contributions to America's future are lost?
By all mean let in the dregs of South America. Let them out-breed you to the point where they utterly dominate what was once your culture. Let gangs of criminals parade up and down your streets demanding rights they don't have and ought not to have because they are criminals. And do nothing but whine about how America is for everyone, or ought to be for everyone because, once upon a time, your ancestors were immigrants.
This is a different age and it requires a different response. Far from vanishing from the stage of history, Nation States are once more its forefront. Nationality and ethnicity have not become a footnote to the history of some international Liberal lovefest where we all sit around a campfire and sing Kum-by-yah in a spirit of universal brotherhood. Instead, we are at each other's throats. Again. And while Oil, and Water, and every other resource remain at a premium, that's exactly where you will find us; and as each year passes the fury of such conflicts will grow ever more extreme, making it ever more important to know who is really with us and who is really against us.
America more than any other is a nation informed by an Idea, and one cornerstone of that Idea is the rule of law. It's vital to the future of America that she grasps, in the fullest possible way, the nature of the rule of law and resubscribes herself and her people to the validity of that rule. And in the life of today's America there is no area where that rule must most immediately be reinforced and be granted the fullest respect than immigration.
A nation and a State that cannot defend its borders and properly and efficiently regulate immigration will not long remain either a nation or a State.