Never underestimate the stuidity of government bureaucrats supported by mass hysteria. The damage these actions are doing to the US, inside and outside, is incalculable.
But the INS, incapable of doing its job properly, just does a few senseless things to show it is doing something. I rememeber a case some years ago in DC. A Japanese woman married an American soldier in Japan just after WWII. They move to the US and live togetehr happily married for like 50 years, until he dies. Now, it seems she nevr bothered to become a US citizen and the INS initiates deportation proceedings against her as she is no longer married to an American and never bothered to get her papers straight. This is an old woman who has lived here for 50 years and has nowhere and nobody to go to in Japan. The INS don’t care. They want her out. Her plight was taken to a local TV station and the case was made public and a stink was raised. people donated money for lawyers and after much pressure and airing the case for some time, finally the INS let her stay. A lot of money had to be raised because they still made her go to Japan and wait for a visa there. The TV station covered her expenses. The poor old woman was lucky to find such help but I imagine how many thousands of people in her situtaion have their lives ruined by bureucrats who couldn’t care less.
Another case I remember was a French couple who owned a motel and also pretty much lost their business, their livelihood and their lives when the INS came after them on a technicality.
Dave was a supervisor where I work and was recently deported for visa violations. Dave came to work as a supervisor in an IT department because he had unique skills that made him highly suited for the task. Dave had experience with governement computer systems and was a veteran of his country’s air-force. Our client loved Dave, he was liked by his employees and worked tirelessly to improve the security of our client’s (who happens to be a government agency) applications. Through a slight fault of his own and a slight fault of our corporate attorneys Dave was 13 days late in filing necessary INS paperwork. Shortly after this deadline the INS gave Dave 14 days to leave the country. Dave owned a house and a had a wife who also worked in this country, two kids as well. The INS showed up at Dave’s house at 9:00am one morning and escorted him to the airport then out of the country. Sadly Dave had to have friends here in the states help him sell his house and car and resolve his debts from abroad. They literally evicted his family from the country. Dave was from the U.K. of all places. Manchester must be a breeding ground for white methodist terrorists.
FWIW I know the INS must be doing SOMETHING more than they used to because I work with lots of immigrants and when I got here five years ago they all had the attitute of “oh yeah, I’ll get around to that INS paperwork someday”. Now they are scared about not dotting one ‘i’ or crossing one ‘t’. It has suddenly become a very big deal. I don’t like what happened in California but a cry of discrimination based on nationality wears a bit thin with me because of what I recently witnessed.
sailor, I’m terrified of something similar happening to my own grandmother! To make a long story somewhat shorter, she was born in Canada, and had an extremely traumatic childhood (her father abandoned the family when she was 4, her mom had some sort of mental breakdown, and she and her 2 siblings were raised largely in an orphanage in Canada). She came to the U.S. as a teenager, and lived with her mother’s grown son from her first marriage. I (and she) have no idea whether she ever naturalized or even became a permanent resident, as things were much more casual back then in U.S./Canada border crossings, and she’s only been back to Canada once (some 30 years or so ago). Since we’re not sure of her mother’s citizenship status (her mom had come to the U.S. before moving to Canada to marry her dad; both were born in Eastern Europe, and neither seems to have had a good idea how to handle North American bureaucracy; they didn’t get a birth certificate for my grandmother until she was almost 16, which is extremely unusual for Canada and made it a bitch to locate, since neither the first or last names matched. It was fun when it showed up in the mail at my house; “Dad, are you sitting down? Good. Well, do you know what your mother’s name is?”), I haven’t been able to determine the derivative citizenship mess, and she has no memory of ever having naturalized, but it’s entirely possible her mom filed for her when she was under 18, in which case she wouldn’t have had to do anything herself.
I’ve been doing some geneaological research the past couple of years, which is part of what prompted this discovery, but let’s just say the family dynamics are rather screwy on that side, and my grandmother (at her sister’s request, not her own; of course I got the OK from my grandmother before poking around) asked me to stop a year or so ago. I had just gotten notification from the National Archives that they’d located a record on my grandmother’s mother, which might have cleared things up, but in respect for my grandmother’s wishes, I never wrote away for it. In the meantime my grandfather died (not that we have proof of his U.S. citizenship, or his name for that matter). I’ve begged and begged the fmaily to let me try to fix this mess, but nobody wants to rock the boat. Not that anyone is likely to bother an 88-year-old great-grandmother who’s been here for 70+ years and isn’t conspicuously foreign, but I’m still worried…
Oh, and Opengrave, INS is also full of equal-opportunity morons. Not everything they do is based on national origin discrimination, but in my educated opinion, a decent chunk of it is. I’m sorry about your co-worker…generally in situations like that, there are ways to resolve problems without having someone deported, but without knowing the particulars of his situation, I can’t provide any specific advice. (And IANAL, I’m a paralegal.)
Opengrave, we agree things are bad for all foreigners regardless of national origin, but they are worse for some countries. UK citizens have not been required to register while Pakistanis have.
Eva, the moral of my story is: when you have a bureaucratic problem with the government, don’t bother talking to the bureaucrats, talk to your local TV station _
Bureaucrats can be the biggest assholes on the face of the earth. They don’t care whether what they do makes any sense or ruins anyone’s life. There are only concerned with following the rules blindly. They are worse than the plague. And they are everywhere.
By golly, that’s it! My unique sexiness transcends hatred. Hey, even if the fanatical Muslims take over the world and start rounding up Americans and shooting them, I can be assured that I, at least, will survive. Sorry 'bout the rest of you, but hey! that’s how it goes.
So he has been in the country for 16 years and never bothered to follow the immigration rigamarole? Bugger him (and his parents/guardians), if he can’t be bothered to register in 16 years.
These people have broken the law. A stupid, convuleted law(s)? Maybe. But that doesn’t change the facts, regardless of how much whining takes place.
The article says NOTHING abut why this person was detained. Until 30 days ago, there WAS no requirement for him, as an Iranian, to register, period. At least not one that had been enforced since the WWII era. Until a year ago, often if noncitizens sent a change of address in to INS, more likely than not it would go in the trash. Even after the current enforcement crackdown took effect, many local INS office staffers have no idea what to tell people who come in to register. They don’t even know their own regulations, so how can they expect people who are hearing about them fourth-hand, if at all, to obey the new regs accurately, especially if they have limited or no English?
More stupidity, and we sure haven’t seen the end of it.
Given what seems to be common knowledge about the efficiency of the INS, I am somewhat less concerned about the prospect of the new “Homeland Security Big Brother Information Agency” (or what ever they call it).
Although I do not necessarily admit the premise, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that is a fact. The penalty for your parents missing some bureaucratic detail when you were a minor should be to send you off to a land where you are a foreigner and you do not speak the language? For the rest of your life?
Would this punishment fit American citizens as well? Anyone who has ever driven on a suspended license or driven over the speed limit? Or didn’t register for selective service?
Or should there be a proportionality between the offense and the penalty. Especially since the government can’t get their house in order. Since the INS can’t do their job maybe we should start punishing the INS?
You bring up a good comparison. Holding a drivers license is a privledge, not a right. Depending on the violation in question, you lose that privledge.
Becoming a citzen of the US is a privledge, not a right. Depending on what you do\do not do, you lose that privledge. (Until, of course, you become a naturalized citizen.)
As for a parent missing ‘some bureaucratic detail’, I would say applying for citizenship is a MAJOR frigging ‘detail’. 16 years is quite a chunk of time to file.
The correct penalty for any driving infraction, no matter how small, is to lose your license for life? Where the hell do you live?
That man has no obligation of applying for citizenship, let’s start with that. And to punish a minor for something his parents might have done is quite unfair.
Would it be fair that you are never allowed to drive because your father once did not feed a parking meter?
If I lose my license, I will either get it back after a while, or will be able to petition to get one later.
If the illegal immigrant is deported, he can apply for citizenship/student visa/whatever later.
I can avoid losing my license by not driving drunk, speeding too much, etc.
Illegal immigrants can avoid being deported (have any of these latest batch actually been deported yet?) by following immigration policy.
And why does ‘that man’ have no obligation of applying for citizenship? Because his parents were remiss in their duties, he gets a pass? He is not a US Citizen, or in the country legally. He can either A) Do something about that, or B)Leave. Its not like he had to give his left arm or something. Just file some papers. Hardly unreasonable.
You seem to live in a very simple world. The real world ain’t so simple.
>> And why does ‘that man’ have no obligation of applying for citizenship?
Where do you get the idea that a legal resident has any obligation of applying for citizenship? Where do you get the idea that only citizens can live in the US? There are hundreds of thousands of legal residents who are not citizens just like there are many Americans living in other countries who choose to remain American citizens.
And the pnalty for double parking or speeding is not a loss of your license.
Maybe one day you will get caught in some bureaucratic snafu and you’ll change your mind about what the consequences should be. For now we’'l just have to agree to disagree.
I believe we are comparing apples to oranges. You point out that we (America) have many legal resident aliens. I agree. But the allegation here is that the people rounded up were illegal resident aliens. Ah well. I hearby agree to disagree.
Having “violated an immigration law” does not mean they are “illegal immigrants” at all and it often means having missed some minor detail which hardly merits the punishment of being separated from your family and sent to a foreign country where you do not understand the language or the culture.
I guess you live in a black and white world where anyone who would forget to renew their driver’s license or pay a tax bill deserves the harshest penalty. I guess you have never made such mistake and plan on never making one. But the rest of us believe in common sense and the proportionality of punishment.
How would you feel now if you were told your parents made a mistake when registering your birth and you are therefore not entitled to your citizenship and have to leave your home country tomorrow and go to a country where you know nobody and do not speak the language. Would you feel that is fair? How about if it was found a granparent of yours came into the country illegally and therefore all his descendants will be deported? Would you feel that is fair too?
