I have just had my status adjusted from visitor/immigrant to that of legally and permanetly Resident Alien. This is a status that has to be renewed every five years. But in 2 years, nine months, and one day (from yesterday) I shall petition to become a citizen of the United States of America. I shall succeed in that petition, and I will count my citizenship an honor.
But Mother-of-fucking-God, how Byzantine, labyrinthine, complex, difficult, confusing, dis-spiriting and expensive a process has it been? It's cost close to $8000 dollars, taken three years, and involved the collection of countless hundreds of documents - virtually none of which were called for at the adjustment interview itself but all of which had to be gathered, hoarded, husbanded and kept together for a period of years just in case they might be needed.
I have been enormously blessed in having the help of my wife's family from the vey beginning. They have borne almost all the financial burdens of this Sisyphean labor - from the cost of the initial medical exam all legal immigrants are subject to, to the costs of filing papers (everything from $550 to file the original petition, to the $175 a pop to renew the work permits) and quite a few things in between.
Without command of considerable amounts of cash, or the support of a sponsor willing to assume the responsibility for providing that cash, it is impossible to immigrate to the USA legally. Not difficult. Impossible.
I firmly believe that any immigration process should be difficult, in order to deter free-loaders who want to use the resources of this country without giving back. Giving back by working and paying taxes. Giving back by assimilating to the mainstream of American culture while adding something extra and unique of one's own. When I become an American citizen I will not be an 'English American', or an 'Anglo-American', I will be an American, purely and simply. I can't escape my heritage and don't wish to - but I can transcend it, amalgamating it with what I find to be best in American culture and making a synthesis which, in its own small way, will be a contribution to and not a deduction from, America as a whole.
In order to safeguard America's borders one of the first things that must be done is to streamline, properly codify (across every State), make comprehensible, uniform, and accessible, whatever system is used to regulate the process of lawful immigration. Accessible but rigorous; demanding and costly to a degree, without being prohibitively exspensive. And the first step to doing that is to make a conscious effort to treat immigration as a bi-partisan issue and not a mechanism by which Republicans and Democrats score points off each other.
And that in itself will almost certainly seriously piss off the Latino Vote since it's Latinos who currently benefit from the present incomprehensible, impossibly complicated, cumbersome 'system', who have most to gain from the present chaos that actively discourages legal immigration and promotes illegal immigration, since the latter is far less costly, and far more direct, than the former.
It took seven months to ship one set of documents from Washington D. C. to Norfolk, VA. My first Social Security Card bore the name 'Sirlon' instead of Simon. 'Sirlon' was recorded as being four years of age. No check has ever been made by INS with any employer that I have worked for here that my papers were in order. Once inside the USA I could have vanished and lived as part of America's 'black economy' with quite astounding ease and, in facing the difficulties and set-backs of the legal process, there was more than one occasion where I was seriously tempted to do so.
The fact that I didn't is testimony to my desire to be here legally and to live the fullest possible life while doing so, something that an illegal immigrant cannot do. The fact that it has taken three years and cost the better part of ten thousand dollars is testimony to the utter disarray of immigration policy. It's my lawyer's constant complaint that immigration policy changes from day to day, and that much of the ease or otherwise with which immigrants pass through the system is determined by which State you first apply in. While her experience in Ohio is extensive and she is there regarded as an expert in her field, she was largely at a loss once we moved to Virginia, her inexperience with immigration law here costing us valuable months in lost time.
It ought to be apparent what the heart of the issue of immigration is, even if the solution is not so plain. The first duty of the State is to defend its borders against external threat; and the second duty of the State is to ensure good order and public peace within those borders. No State will survive unfettered, uncontrolled immigration (another word for uncontrolled immigration is 'invasion'). And while America has never been homogenous in its population it has largely lived, throughout its brief history, on an ethos of individual effort and individual possession of the rewards of that effort, that is in its origin Protestant, Christian, and Northern European.
And yes, I am discounting the role of the indigenous peoples of the North American continent in forming the nation of America, since those peoples were and are nations unto themselves and have had almost no role in the formation of the American polity as it is today. Why that's so has no relevance to this article. The fact of the matter is that it is so. And the ethos that has supported that polity is under threat, to such an extent that both defence of external borders and the securing of order and public peace within them is at risk.
It is under threat because no contemporary American politician has will enough, courage enough, or political clout enough, to move the debate from partisan conflict to discussion which addresses the actual issue: what can be done to stem the waves of illegal immigrants from Mexico, and what can be done to make legal immigration the preferred option for migrants wishing to come here.
It is under threat because Latino culture is anti-individualistic, communal in nature, and largely Catholic, emphasising regulation from without instead of self-discipline and emphasing foreign nations and foreign powers as the sources of its identity and ethos. And it is under threat because no politician is willing to challenge the Latino Vote as to whether it is Mexican or American, as to where it true loyalty lies, because to do threatens the real interest of almost every democratic politician anywhere - getting re-elected.
Until a politician of courage, determination, and charisma enough to forge a working consensus on the issue makes an appearance and grasps the nettle of immigration policy, (and sadly there is no sign of such a politician emerging any time soon - Bush is not the man to do it, busy as he is giving away amnesties to Wetbacks) nothing will be done to stem the endless waves of Mexicans making their way into the country. And that means nothing can be done about the emergent Latino Vote, which appears to be constituted by people whose only use for America is as a cash-cow to be milked for money to be sent home to Mexico.
It's never wise to allow the establishment within a polity of a large group whose sole purpose in being part of that polity is to exploit it for their own ends.
My own people, the English, have for a considerable number of centuries exerted inescapable sway over all the peoples of Britain. They have done so through war, fraud, deceit, regicide, and by any other means which came to their hands, and I have not the least shame in saying so. We kicked the asses of the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh, on a regular basis and to such good effect that to this day they remain subjugated peoples - just as they ought, seeing that in the millenia that have passed since the collapse of the Roman Empire they have not been able to escape our grip.
We did so because the English have always known two things - a house divided against itself cannot stand; and the house that was to be built in the Island of Britain was going to be ours and no one else's. A small dose of that ruthlessness, combined with a large dose of good governance (as opposed to government through partisan and therefore impotent debate) would be helpful if addressed to the question of immigration.
