28 May 2010

The Road Trip

Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I are known for taking road trips.  Seldom are they successful.  In fact, our road trips only seem to lack the presence of Fred and Ethel Mertz for inclusion in an I Love Lucy rerun.

Case in point, a few years ago, I booked a suite online at a hotel in Atlantic City.  Better, it was near Atlantic City.   Actually, it was in Camden, but five blocks from a bus line to Absecon, where I could switch buses and get to Atlantic City. 

On top of this, I had erred gravely on the date of Easter.  I hadn’t been to church in a while, and many parishes frown upon loaded semis in unreinforced parking lots.   So we missed the holiday by, uh, it doesn’t matter.  We missed the holiday, and I will not live it down at any point in the next three eternities.

When we got to Camden, the room was not so much a suite as it was a barracks.  There were three narrow beds in a row.  A black-and-white analog television was bolted to the wall.  I feared that our wake up call would be from a burly gentleman with a crew cut and tan clothes who would refer to us as “maggots.”

So we took a bus to Absecon, and found a nice, albeit retro, suite at Patel’s Motel.  It rained all weekend, but was two whole degrees warmer at 58 Fahrenheit than Easter weekend.   This required the purchase of copious quantities of shoes.

Our luck in Florida has scarcely been better.  Just before the recent unpleasantness, I found lodging in the kind of establishment which one normally finds in the pages of Conde Nast with a boatload of little symbols next to its name.  They were remodeling, and bonus, they were a mile from the nearest Lone Star Burger.

Then I got the brilliant idea to go out in the sun.  People who observe Mrs. Wandering Gentile, the Hijastras, and me together are prone to observe the three pretty ladies and, “…damn, Casper sure got FAT!”

I spent two months with my legs in the same peculiar shade of orange as John Boehner’s face.  And I learned that an extremely bad sunburn itches.  It itches A LOT.  I remembered to cover my coconut and arms, but I had NEVER had sunburn on my legs in 40 years of living.

I don’t ever want the second one.  From now on I wear a burqa to the beach.

This year, we had an abbreviated visit to Florida.  I went, in my burqa, reading British tabloids and periodically retiring to the mini mart for frozen beverage treats.  We found a pleasant room in a chain hotel, and I even got my trip to Lone Star Burger.

Mrs. Wandering Gentile was not as enthusiastic about us returning to Lone Star Burger for dinner.  She wanted chicken, and half a mile before we got to Lone Star Burger, there was an Admiral Squibby’s Connecticut Chicken.   I would not have chosen Admiral Squibby’s, being that we have one so close to home their grease spatters our back patio.

Mrs. Wandering Gentile, the Hijastras (Jasmine and Sasha), and I were to split 16 pieces of Hartford Hot chicken, two pints of El Morro Style black beans and rice,  four Big River sodas, and four Adirondack Apple pies.

As Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I were filling our sodas at the fountain, there came an unholy roar from the dining area.  The suction pulled my Red Sox cap straight off my burqa.

We entered to find Sasha, the younger, but physically more imposing of the two sisters hunkered in the corner in a Jet Li pose, defending a Hartford Hot drumstick.

Everything else was gone.  Our order; a table that the manager was pretty sure was there when he got there; and some New Haven Hush Puppies which were not technically ours, because they had been technically paid for by the polite senior Canadian couple at the next table.

As I made things right with the Canadians, I heard Mrs. Wandering Gentile ask the petite Jasmine what she had to say for herself.

“I was hungry.  Can we get ice cream?”

It wasn’t me this time.

09 May 2010

Carol, the Illegal Alien

The following includes the real laws as they are enforced.  "Carol" is a composite of several individuals who are detrimentally affected by current immigration legislation.  One hopes that the gentle reader will forgive the use of a composite, being that it protects the identities of more than one decent human being who got screwed over.


Carol is an undocumented immigrant.  She entered the United States legally in 1992 as a 22-year-old student at a major university in the Southeast.  Carol did well in her studies, and married her first husband, a Mathematics major at the same school, in 1993.

At the time they were under the impression that marriage provided automatic permanent residency in the United States.  Carol and her first husband did not file the appropriate paperwork in 1993.  Her student visa expired with her graduation from the university in 1994.

In 1995, Carol and her first husband split, a couple of months before their second anniversary.  She caught him balancing equations with an 18-year-old intern from Tuscaloosa, and neither one had any clothes on.

She continued on a career path at a restaurant chain in a major Sun Belt city.  Carol eventually remarried, to Mike, who hated math, and refused to balance his checkbook.  They have two boys, Dylan and Josh, ages 13 and 10. Carol managed to ascend to the post of district manager with the restaurant chain when complications arose.

In 2007, Carol went to renew her driver's license.  As a result of the Real ID laws passed after 9/11, Carol was asked for more documentation of her residency.  As can be imagined, she didn't have any, or know that she had needed any.

Carol's husband, Mike, was unaware that there was any complication with her residency status in the United States.  Upon discovery of issues with Carol's documentation, they consulted with an attorney about normalizing her status.

Actually, they consulted with more than one.  Several requested fees up front, only to tell them that her case was next to impossible to normalize, once they got a hundred and fifty bucks or so.  A couple made promises that there would be no problem in arranging her documentation, demanding fees in the thousands of dollars beyond the thousands of dollars needed for the appropriate government applications.

Only one such attorney was necessary to break the illusion that he could do any better than the attorney who told them, for free, that there was nothing he could do.

The next year, a participant in E-Verify absorbed Carol's employer.  Carol's 12 years of exemplary work, commendation and competence vaporized overnight.  A large chunk of her family's income vaporized as well. So did their ability to continue to make their mortgage payments, car payments, and provide a better upbringing for their kids.

They are now living in a rented mobile home near Mike's parents.  The kids have been taken out of their quality suburban school district, and now face the free lunch lines and the methamphetamine addiction issues common to rural America.  The boys now exhibit behavior issues due to the upheavals in their lives.

Carol's husband does the best he can, but his job requires frequent travel.  They manage to keep a roof and lights, but her husband has the nagging concern that his telephone will ring with the call that his wife has been removed from their home.  They joke that the employment options which would keep him closer to home involve such a drastic pay cut that he would be forced to sell one of the kids.

A large component of Carol's family no longer resides in her native country.  Some are in Canada, others in Europe.  A few live in the United States, some around the sun belt city where she settled in the nineties.  Some are legal, others not so much.

If Carol is caught without papers, she will be returned to her native country for a minimum of ten years for remaining in the United States for more than 180 days without the appropriate papers.  That means that she faces a minimum of ten years before she can reapply for legal readmission to the United States.

Neither her husband nor her children speak her native language, so relocation is not an option for them.

There are those who want others to conflate the face of undocumented immigration with a tiny subculture of thugs, young men and women of ill will.  But the truth is very different, filled with men and women like Carol and her family.  Before considering the one in a hundred with evil in his heart, the ninety-nine like Carol are deserving of our compassion, our understanding, and our embrace as a nation of immigrants.