Immigration Reform and Families
by: Craig Wiesner on May 4th, 2010 | 7 Comments »
I’m a total supporter of immigration reform that recognizes the impracticality of deporting nearly 12 million people who are in our country without proper documentation. Let’s find a way to bring them out of the shadows. But, I also look at the immigrants who are here WITH proper documentation, who have been working for years – separated from their families, and I implore Congress to consider and honor those people with reform legislation that helps reunite them with those they love.
I’m half Gypsy – half Russian. My grandparents immigrated to this country a very long time ago. Today, my father who suffers from severe dementia, counts on immigrants to care for him every day. The woman who owns the Board and Care facility where he lives spent many years of her life separated from her husband. He worked in the Middle East oil fields while she became an RN (Registered Nurse) here in the United States.
They put in years of difficult work, on separate continents, so that they could eventually live a life that they love, together… an American dream come true. They’re citizens now, with children who have graduated from college and have wonderful careers. They still work harder than most anyone I know, as do the folks who work in the Board and Care homes they manage.
What troubles me, from a justice standpoint, is that our immigration policies keep people who play by the rules separated from their families, for way too long.
For someone who gets to work in the United States legally, with a “green card,” it can take four to seven years before that person can bring his or her family here – let alone for any members of his or her family to be able to work here. We have to change that. If we truly need someone from another country to work here, then we have to allow that person’s family to be here too, within some reasonable amount of time. And yes, we have to provide education, health care, and other basic human services to those whom we call to help us in our country.
Are we a nation of “family values” or do we prefer to keep families apart?
As we start to seriously debate immigration reform, let’s keep families in mind. My family’s life is extraordinarily better because of the wonderful caregivers in my father’s house. Their lives would be extraordinarily better if their spouses and children could also be with them.
I agree. We need immigration reform to pass! I am a 31/white male from South Texas. I just attended the march in San Antonio. We need to keep families together!
I definitely agree with you. I am legal permanent resident. I went through english exams both written and oral. I went through a LOT of paper works…. And here I am separated from my family because of the visa backlog. The immigration system is broken. The system is separating families. Congress has to think also about how legal residents go through on a daily basis separated from spouse and children.
My heart goes out to those individuals who are separated from their families. I also feel the system is broken to the point that it leaves frustration and anger as a result. There are those of us who feel that the huge amount of undocumented immigrants who cross over the boarder illegally are a detriment and burden to our hard earned lifestyle. While all opinions should be heard and taken into account the disparity in our two countries will have to be equalized before this issue can move in the direction of resolution. If we do not all work together with an open mind and a determination to find some consensus then things will continue to deteriorate. Talk with all those involved and then listen to their stories. Some of them bring tears to my eyes, on both sides of the issues.
Thanks Tom,
It is by far the most important thing in the world we can do… listening to people’s stories. Just laws are best made when we understand everyone who is impacted by them, and try to fashion compassionate and effective legislation that benefits the most and harms the least.
I don’t agree. The U.S., like every country in the world, has finite space and resources. We can’t be home to everybody who wants to come here. This is an indisputable fact.
The U.S. has the most liberal immigration policy in the world, allowing one million legal immigrants into the country every year. We also allow tens of thousands to enter via H1-B and other visas and when those visas have expired, years of poor government oversight has allowed some to just disappear in the country. In fact our increase in population is beginning to resemble that of a Third World Country and much of it comes from immigration. Once here, immigrants can sponsor other family members so that behind those immigrants are millions more who come through chain migration. We don’t have the jobs and resources for the people already here but we can bring in millions more? Legalizing presently illegal immigrants will result in chain migration as well so that the initial number of immigrants is just the beginning.
If you want to change anything, abolish NAFTA. Mexicans, for example, come here because NAFTA which was supposed to help working people in Mexico, America, and Canada was really designed to help big financial interests and investors, seeking cheap labor and lower production costs. Yet I hear no mention of NAFTA. NAFTA must be a part of the discussion of any comprehensive reform.
The USA is a country largely populated by people whose families came from somewhere else, and who by some form for of social chicanery – be it political, economic, militaristic, or otherwise, managed to remain.
Memory is short. Huge chunks of Mexico were taken by force from the people of Mexico. Native people in what is now the USA were promised the moon and given green cheese. Africans brought in bondage for slave labor were promised “40 acres and a mule” and given Jim Crow. Immigrants or refuges the ancestors of a huge number of people once were, “once upon a time” – yet the descendants of those immigrants are mistakenly convinced of their entitlement to land that, as sure as sunshine in southern AZ, once belonged to others.
NAFTA was another form of theft. As were the USA’s actions towards Allende, Castro, Chavez – to any and all entities whose ambition has been to give back to the peoples of these American continents what was seized from them/
It is those who are descendants of those who first did the stealing who should be asked to account for themselves. And those people are WE. We who drive cars as if cars were a right rather than a privilege and responsibility. WE who make war rather than wage peace, we who by our deeds and attitudes abet a hunger for drugs, for land, for natural resources, for cheap labor, for good, for services – for energy, for energy. The energy of others.
Ms. Weintraub, I believe that if we reach back far enough, there is strong evidence to suggest that the continents were connected at one time, and that even the American Indians came from some other place. They didn’t just suddenly appear.
May I also suggest that WE have been propagandized and manipulated by corporate marauders and this was possible because our own government has been promoting the agenda of corporations through its own policies, regulations (or non-regulations) and military aggressiveness? First comes deregulation, then privatization, and then destruction of social safety nets for ordinary people so that wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of fewer people. We were SOLD on NAFTA and how it would help workers in Mexico and the U.S. Communities were designed, not to be pedestrian friendly, but car friendly. A small, but powerful group of neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy and manipulated us into Middle East wars. Our entire economy was designed to consume so that 70% of GDP depends on consumption. Transforming us into an economy that consumes so much was the result of deliberate government policies. It wasn’t an accident. We transport goods made half-way around the world and consume huge amounts of energy to do so.
When confronted with the first major oil crisis, back in Carter’s days, what was the response afterwards? Build bigger cars!! When did the government ever put in place policies to immediately begin to reduce dependence on oil?
Believe me, I’m not trying to divert attention from our own personal culpability and choices in this matter. It seems to me, however, that we need to put a lot of emphasis on how the government and corporations appear to have become welded into one.