I
AM AN IMMIGRANT
OUTLINE:
1. HOW I CAME TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2. MOST AMERICANS ARE DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS.
3. THE OTHER MEANING OF "IMMIGRANT"
4. AND WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT CITIZENS OF OTHER COUNTRIES
WHO ARE LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT
PERMISSION?
5.
WHAT PORTION OF THE POPULATION OF EARTH
WANTS TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES?
I
AM AN IMMIGRANT
by
James Leonard Park
1. HOW I CAME TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Late one night at the end of 1949,
I came into the United States of America.
I was only 8 years old at the time.
And I was immigrating with my whole family.
At the border, we were interviewed by immigration
officers,
who probably had first checked our immigration papers
that allowed us the status of landed immigrants.
My father already had a job lined up and a house purchased.
Two moving vans of our household possessions had preceded us.
Each member of the family was questioned,
photographed, & fingerprinted.
This last element particularly sticks in my memory,
since I associated fingerprinting with criminals.
And I knew that we were not criminals.
More than 60 years later,
I was able to see my childhood picture in my immigration file,
when I was applying for Social Security.
It was black-and-white, of course.
There I was at age 8 sitting alone on a wooden chair.
For me, America has truly been the land of
opportunity.
Almost everything that I have become
has been made possible because I am an American.
People who were born in the USA
do not always realize all of the opportunities we have.
But if we will think for a few minutes
how different our lives would have been if we had
been born and lived in some other country of the world,
we might appreciate everything that has been given to us
just by the accident of bring born in this country.
I suffered no discrimination because of my country
of origin.
I always spoke English as my native language.
I did not look any different from the other kids in school.
I was completely accepted by everyone from the very first day.
I tell this story simply to show how orderly
immigration can be.
My parents had visited the United States before bringing in the rest of
the family.
And they had selected a house for us all to live in.
As already mentioned, my father had a job waiting for him.
In almost all practical elements,
it was no different from moving to Minnesota from another state of the
USA.
I had no part in doing the paperwork to immigrate to
the USA.
That was all handled by my parents.
And there must not have been much waiting time,
since we moved with little interruption in my father's employment.
As soon as he knew he had to find a new job, he considered the USA
—and
quickly arranged for the whole family to move here.
Immigration takes much longer in the 21st
century,
in part because there are so many people who would like to live in
America.
But there are orderly processes in place
by which individuals and families from all over the world
can emigrate to the United States of America.
The current processes of immigration need to be reformed,
perhaps beginning first with the most obvious problems
created by the present laws and regulations of the United States.
Five years after we arrived, we all became citizens
of the USA.
Thus, even tho I was born in another country,
I have been an American citizen since I was 13 years old.
Naturalization was also an easy process as far as I know.
One other thing I remember from my childhood
was taking a notice to the local post office once a year,
which was to tell the Immigration and Naturalization Service
just where all of us lived.
We were still at the same address.
But we had to report that fact once per year on a simple card.
I think
it was called the alien registration form.
After we were all naturalized, of course,
it was not longer necessary for us to report our addresses.
And as all of the children grew up, we left home one by one.
My sister returned to Canada to get married.
But the rest of us still live in the USA.
And we are all still American citizens.
We have not committed any crimes.
And none of us has ever been in jail.
Each of us has contributed to American society in his own way.
Most of us received our educations in the USA.
And we are fully integrated into American society.
I have become an existential philosopher,
which might not have happened
if I had stayed in the country of my birth.
As far as I can remember,
no one has ever guessed that I was not a born-American.
I have lived the life that was open to any other American.
Beyond being allowed into the USA,
no special privileges have ever come to me or my family.
Everything we had was paid for by us.
In short, it cost the USA nothing to admit us.
2. MOST AMERICANS ARE
DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS.
Except for the "Indians"—the
indigenous
peoples
who have been in the Americas for thousands of years—
most
Americans can tell a similar story of their ancestors
coming from other countries to settle in the USA.
How many generations ago did your ancestors come to America?
Besides the most recent immigration story told above,
I also have a classic immigration story:
In 1630, my direct ancestor in the male line,
Sir Robert Parke came from London, England
with most of his family,
to settle in New England.
In 1630 North America had no immigration controls:
If you could set foot on this continent from any ship,
you were welcome to stay.
My part of the Park family went to Canada during the Revolutionary War
because they did not believe in the violent overthrow of the
government.
About 200 years later, my nuclear family returned to the USA.
Thus, my ancestry in North American goes back
almost 400 years,
11 generations of Parks on this continent.
Most of the other European-Americans have not been
here that long.
And African-Americans can tell of their ancestors being brought here by
force
during a period of more than a hundred years.
The importing and exporting of slaves was abolished in 1807.
And the slaves in the southern states were all freed in 1865.
Each American family has its own complex story of immigration.
If you
now live in the USA,
when did your
ancestors arrive on these shores?
3. THE OTHER MEANING OF "IMMIGRANT"
But when you saw the title of this essay,
you might have been expecting something entirely different.
Most often when the word "immigrant" appears in the news,
it refers to people who have entered the USA without permission.
Even tho there are millions of us who have been
admitted to the USA
and become naturalized citizens,
we are not the people who are being discussed in the 'immigration'
debate.
Rather, the USA is confronting a continuing problem
of immigration without
permission,
especially from the countries to the south of the USA.
But, of course, there are unauthorized immigrants coming into the USA
every day from many countries of the world.
Some simply step across the border.
But most arrive as visitors by the normal means of transportation:
airplanes, trains, buses, & cars.
And if they had a visa granting permission to enter the country,
some of them simply melt into the population when their visas expire.
Few people would 'solve' the problem of immigration
by simply saying that anyone in the world
who wants to come to the USA has a right to do so.
It is simply not practical to open our borders to all comers.
(Perhaps
one billion of the people on the Earth would like to live in the USA.)
In the first hundred years of the USA,
this land did welcome
all who came.
But now, early in the 21st century, we must limit the number of
immigrants.
Just how we will revise our patterns of immigration remains to be seen.
4. AND WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT
CITIZENS OF OTHER COUNTRIES
WHO ARE LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT
PERMISSION?
According to all estimates, the number of people
living in the USA
without any legal right to reside in America numbers in the
millions.
The sheer numbers make it difficult to imagine sending them all 'home'.
Some of these citizens of other countries were
brought here
as children.
This was also my situation,
altho I was brought into the USA with the permission of the
U.S.
government.
Millions of other children were brought into the USA without permission.
Children smuggled across the border should not be treated as criminals.
The unauthorized immigration was committed by their parents.
And present immigration policy is to repatriate
foreign
families together.
The children might have been so young
that they did not know what national borders mean.
Other children have been born within the borders of
the USA
to parents who were citizens of other countries.
These children also cannot be said to be guilty of any crime.
And under present law, they become U.S. citizens
the moment they are born within our borders.
And if they are still too young to take care of
themselves,
they would normally be repatriated with their parents
if the parents must return to the country in which they hold
citizenship.
Many very complicated family situations arise
when some members are U.S. citizens,
others have legal permission to live in the USA,
and some others are citizens of other countries living here without
permission.
Any immigration reform must find ways to deal with such complex
family situations.
Which family members can remain in the USA?
Which family members must be returned to their countries of origin?
How much cross-border visiting will be permitted,
especially in light of the fact that all would still like to live in
the USA?
Some people who are repatriated because they were
here without permission
will be able to apply for legal
immigration at some later time.
And the fact that they have already lived for some years in the USA
should be taken into account when deciding to re-admit them.
5. WHAT PORTION OF THE
POPULATION OF EARTH
WANTS
TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES?
Probably no polls have been taken,
but I am guessing that hundreds
of millions
of the people of the Earth
dream of living in the USA.
In our hearts, we
might feel inclined to welcome
them all.
But in our heads, we
know that there is not
enough room
for adding one billion people to the U.S. population.
Because so many
people want to live in the USA,
America must limit the number of new people entering each year.
We
will probably welcome visitors—who
return to their home countries.
But we must limit the numbers of people permitted to emigrate
to the USA to become permanent residents and later citizens.
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent existential
philosopher,
living and writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
He was born in Canada,
which accounts for his ease in becoming an American.
Much more will be learned about him on his website.
Here are a few related on-line essays on immigration
reform:
Expanding the
DREAM Act:
New Pathways to Citizenship . D
End
Deportation of Persons Likely to Qualify for
a Pathway to Citizenship under Immigration Reform .
D
Registration
without Deportation:
Bringing
Millions of Foreign Nationals out of the Shadows . D N
Register all
Foreign Nationals:
Carrots and Sticks . D
Earning
American Citizenship:
Be Above Average . D
These (plus
several others) are used in a cyber-seminar on
immigration reform.
Created
July 13,2010; Revised 7-24-2010; 7-27-2010; 7-29-2010; 8-1-2010;
9-10-2010; 11-22-2010; 11-23-2011; 5-12-2012; 1-31-2013
The
website of the UUA has many resources related to
immigration,