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.
Showing posts with label Immigration Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Immigration Reform. Show all posts
09 May 2010
28 March 2009
Escorts A La Parrilla (Grilled Escorts)
An arsonist is targeting green Ford Escorts, approximately fifteen years old, in Medford, Oregon.
That Arsonist is a long way from being "right," starting with nascent pyromania and ending with his choice of target.
The Ford Escort of the nineties was a good kind of cheap, like a bologna sandwich made from name brand fixings. It was a great bologna sandwich on wheels, but that's all it ever would be. The engines had useful horsepower, and they were decent handlers on good tires, but it was purpose-built for transparency, universally adequate and uninspiring. The GT models charmed with 40 extra horsepower elicited the passion reserved for nude photos of Meryl Streep. (I'll look, but I doubt that I will become aroused.)
It was not bad, but it left the driver with the sense of being transported passively, much as if one had used public transit. It was cheap, dull, and until the recent unpleasantness, disposable.
Family members would give Escorts away until the point where nine-year-olds would curse about the potential cost of disposing of yet another Ford Escort. The well-meaning relative would be attempting to impress a kid and inspire a lifelong automotive enthusiasm. The nine-year-old would be lamenting the lack of a cash offering to be leveraged into the purchase of a bootleg copy of Grand Theft Auto:Peach City, featuring an even more phallic doppelganger for Atlanta's Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel.
This led to the employ of the first strategic abandonment technique: Enlist a tallish 12-to-15-year-old sibling, that young'un with the fever for getting behind the wheel of anything, and some of the ability to do something about it. Drive the Escort to a rough neighborhood, and leave it with the keys in the switch, the title on the driver's seat, with the windows open.
That would be how the police would find the Escort, often with the keys to hot-list luxury imports under the windshield wiper. These Escorts would find their way back to their rightful owners who had to lose another five bucks worth of GTA:PC savings on gas to try and dump the thing again.
In the nearly twenty year history of Escort-dumping this technique only worked once, at the home of one Austin Morris, in the Happy Holiday Acres Manufactured Home Plaza (nee Mobile Home Park), Emerson, Georgia. Mr. Austin Morris is a good friend and somewhat computer literate, promising to raise your Wandering Gentile's readership percentage by double digits...someday. He did quite well scavenging useful bits from abandoned Escorts and keeping his pricipal Escort in as-new condition.
On 12 May, 2005, while visiting his mother in Decatur, a freak windstorm removed Mr. Morris' Zayre Garden Storage Shed, featuring enough mechanical components to assemble up to six complete Escorts, given an adequate supply of bodies. Rumors of Escort parts raining in Hinesville, nearly 300 miles away, have been so viciously denied by authorities in Liberty County and on Fort Stewart that we are forced to believe that the rumors are true.
Mr. Morris, lacking the desire to continue using his wrench set, or collect his parts in Southeast Georgia, became a Toyota man, and hasn't had to fix squat since. And this has nothing to do with an individual torching Escorts 3000 miles away in Oregon. Yet.
The other Escort disposal technique was a much more successful codicil in the NAFTA treaty. Escorts are required to be towed out of the country as a condition of registering a Ford or Nissan pickup from the United States in Mexico. Of the 17 million Escorts manufactured between 1981 and 2001, fully 14 million have been expatriated/repatriated to Mexico. That makes them ubiquitous, just not as ubiquitous as before, except on I-35 in Texas.
Owing to the recent economic unpleasantness, some debate exists as to whether the nation's fleet should be repurposed abroad, with a goal of restarting manufacture. It is entirely possible that a person or persons unknown are acting in Medford out of the suspicion that these Escorts have been employed in the thwarting of immigration enactments, knowing how many Escorts have been repurposed to Mexico.
Does anyone know the whereabouts of Lou Dobbs on the nights of the fires?
That Arsonist is a long way from being "right," starting with nascent pyromania and ending with his choice of target.
The Ford Escort of the nineties was a good kind of cheap, like a bologna sandwich made from name brand fixings. It was a great bologna sandwich on wheels, but that's all it ever would be. The engines had useful horsepower, and they were decent handlers on good tires, but it was purpose-built for transparency, universally adequate and uninspiring. The GT models charmed with 40 extra horsepower elicited the passion reserved for nude photos of Meryl Streep. (I'll look, but I doubt that I will become aroused.)
It was not bad, but it left the driver with the sense of being transported passively, much as if one had used public transit. It was cheap, dull, and until the recent unpleasantness, disposable.
Family members would give Escorts away until the point where nine-year-olds would curse about the potential cost of disposing of yet another Ford Escort. The well-meaning relative would be attempting to impress a kid and inspire a lifelong automotive enthusiasm. The nine-year-old would be lamenting the lack of a cash offering to be leveraged into the purchase of a bootleg copy of Grand Theft Auto:Peach City, featuring an even more phallic doppelganger for Atlanta's Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel.
This led to the employ of the first strategic abandonment technique: Enlist a tallish 12-to-15-year-old sibling, that young'un with the fever for getting behind the wheel of anything, and some of the ability to do something about it. Drive the Escort to a rough neighborhood, and leave it with the keys in the switch, the title on the driver's seat, with the windows open.
That would be how the police would find the Escort, often with the keys to hot-list luxury imports under the windshield wiper. These Escorts would find their way back to their rightful owners who had to lose another five bucks worth of GTA:PC savings on gas to try and dump the thing again.
In the nearly twenty year history of Escort-dumping this technique only worked once, at the home of one Austin Morris, in the Happy Holiday Acres Manufactured Home Plaza (nee Mobile Home Park), Emerson, Georgia. Mr. Austin Morris is a good friend and somewhat computer literate, promising to raise your Wandering Gentile's readership percentage by double digits...someday. He did quite well scavenging useful bits from abandoned Escorts and keeping his pricipal Escort in as-new condition.
On 12 May, 2005, while visiting his mother in Decatur, a freak windstorm removed Mr. Morris' Zayre Garden Storage Shed, featuring enough mechanical components to assemble up to six complete Escorts, given an adequate supply of bodies. Rumors of Escort parts raining in Hinesville, nearly 300 miles away, have been so viciously denied by authorities in Liberty County and on Fort Stewart that we are forced to believe that the rumors are true.
Mr. Morris, lacking the desire to continue using his wrench set, or collect his parts in Southeast Georgia, became a Toyota man, and hasn't had to fix squat since. And this has nothing to do with an individual torching Escorts 3000 miles away in Oregon. Yet.
The other Escort disposal technique was a much more successful codicil in the NAFTA treaty. Escorts are required to be towed out of the country as a condition of registering a Ford or Nissan pickup from the United States in Mexico. Of the 17 million Escorts manufactured between 1981 and 2001, fully 14 million have been expatriated/repatriated to Mexico. That makes them ubiquitous, just not as ubiquitous as before, except on I-35 in Texas.
Owing to the recent economic unpleasantness, some debate exists as to whether the nation's fleet should be repurposed abroad, with a goal of restarting manufacture. It is entirely possible that a person or persons unknown are acting in Medford out of the suspicion that these Escorts have been employed in the thwarting of immigration enactments, knowing how many Escorts have been repurposed to Mexico.
Does anyone know the whereabouts of Lou Dobbs on the nights of the fires?
01 December 2008
Conservative Suicide
If Conservatives were less intent upon attending to other people's business and assuring that they legislated effectively, they would not be scrounging around the Beltway for lobbying jobs today. If Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter had been more cognizant of the situation facing the nation; had Lou Dobbs ever bothered to vet a statistic, then Conservative ideas may have earned broader acceptance in the marketplace.
Conservatives got what they asked for.
One does not wish to discredit conservative punditry's knowledge of it's audience. Among them, discussion of alterations to the Tax Code, Abortion, Immigration Reform, or Gay Rights provokes a visceral, immediate and almost uniform reaction. Regrettably (for them), the Far Right Opinion Machine had either no idea or no reverence for the growing chasm between them and the majority.
The Far Right lost on alterations to the Tax Code. Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Ron Paul followed behind the "Fair Tax," a consumption tax scheme designed by Atlanta-based radio host Neal Boortz, and Representative John Linder. The basis of its appeal, the decommissioning of the IRS and the sixteenth amendment, is also its downfall.
While one is disinclined to speaking favorably about the IRS, the IRS also has the unenviable task of enforcing the tax codes of the United States. The Internal Revenue Service is overdue for reform in more aspects than can be enumerated here. But doing away with it and moving to a consumption tax lacking regulation or enforcement mechanisms is a vote for the same lack of oversight that put the nation in dutch in the first place.
One also questions a system which allows government to know exactly what and in what quantities an individual purchases. (Hey! Bob just bought fifteen gallons of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla. Why does he need that?) The current system stinks, but it's better than this alternative.
While questioning President-elect Obama's credentials as a Capitalist, there has been no outcry from Far-Right punditry about the redistribution of wealth from 99% to 1% of the population via current tax policy. One is loath to use a broad term like oligarchist, but what, precisely, is different from the Bolsheviks apart from the transparency of the wealth transfer?
The wealthy have the option of sitting upon their wealth. In the middle classes, a pent up demand exists for liquidity which will purchase cars, homes, durable goods and health care. Call it Trickle Up, a/k/a a rising tide lifts all boats.
The worthy far-right opposition totally lost the abortion debate. The majority is disinclined to reinstating governmental authority over abortion, at times in spite of intense moral opposition to the practice itself. The majority feels that the home is the best place for this discussion, as opposed to public fora. That, and about half of the population is biologically incapable of ever having an abortion in the first place, and would really rather watch football.
In the case of Immigration Reform, four candidates made their opposition a centerpiece of their campaigns. To put it in perspective, in Georgia's Republican primary, the two most vocal opponents to Immigration Reform, Representatives Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, managed to gain 1,076 votes combined.
The author of the Immigration Reform bill despised by Representatives Hunter and Tancredo, Senator John McCain, was a very credible second place with 303,639 votes. Governor Huckabee, who had actually enacted legislation which could be construed as benefitting people who had entered illegally, took first place with 326,069. Call that a 585 to 1 differential against Hunter and Tancredo.
The Far Right Opinion Machine got one small victory in 2008. Proposition 8 failed in California. Judicial resources are going to be tied up for the foreseeable future, and anybody betting on prop 8's survival in the Golden State should be encouraged to send that money via The Wandering Gentile's Commode, P.O. Box Flush-Like-Rush, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
The Gay activist community may soon discover that they are better served by exacting revenge upon the talismen of conservatism. A few well placed ballot initiatives with regard to additional levies upon SUVs, McMansions, guns, and politically active faith communities in California could be much more effective than protesting in West Hollywood.
There is a country which already has many of the things that the Far Right Opinion Machine embraces already. This crucible should be seen as a oracle for the far right. That country has one of the lowest tax burdens in the world. Nativism has been an obstacle to diversity. The country has a strong relationship with a Conservative Christian community of both clergy and laity. Money is not spent on onerous schools or social programs. The wealthy have authority in all matters, and Mexicans are leaving in droves.
That country is Mexico.
Conservatives got what they asked for.
One does not wish to discredit conservative punditry's knowledge of it's audience. Among them, discussion of alterations to the Tax Code, Abortion, Immigration Reform, or Gay Rights provokes a visceral, immediate and almost uniform reaction. Regrettably (for them), the Far Right Opinion Machine had either no idea or no reverence for the growing chasm between them and the majority.
The Far Right lost on alterations to the Tax Code. Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Ron Paul followed behind the "Fair Tax," a consumption tax scheme designed by Atlanta-based radio host Neal Boortz, and Representative John Linder. The basis of its appeal, the decommissioning of the IRS and the sixteenth amendment, is also its downfall.
While one is disinclined to speaking favorably about the IRS, the IRS also has the unenviable task of enforcing the tax codes of the United States. The Internal Revenue Service is overdue for reform in more aspects than can be enumerated here. But doing away with it and moving to a consumption tax lacking regulation or enforcement mechanisms is a vote for the same lack of oversight that put the nation in dutch in the first place.
One also questions a system which allows government to know exactly what and in what quantities an individual purchases. (Hey! Bob just bought fifteen gallons of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla. Why does he need that?) The current system stinks, but it's better than this alternative.
While questioning President-elect Obama's credentials as a Capitalist, there has been no outcry from Far-Right punditry about the redistribution of wealth from 99% to 1% of the population via current tax policy. One is loath to use a broad term like oligarchist, but what, precisely, is different from the Bolsheviks apart from the transparency of the wealth transfer?
The wealthy have the option of sitting upon their wealth. In the middle classes, a pent up demand exists for liquidity which will purchase cars, homes, durable goods and health care. Call it Trickle Up, a/k/a a rising tide lifts all boats.
The worthy far-right opposition totally lost the abortion debate. The majority is disinclined to reinstating governmental authority over abortion, at times in spite of intense moral opposition to the practice itself. The majority feels that the home is the best place for this discussion, as opposed to public fora. That, and about half of the population is biologically incapable of ever having an abortion in the first place, and would really rather watch football.
In the case of Immigration Reform, four candidates made their opposition a centerpiece of their campaigns. To put it in perspective, in Georgia's Republican primary, the two most vocal opponents to Immigration Reform, Representatives Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, managed to gain 1,076 votes combined.
The author of the Immigration Reform bill despised by Representatives Hunter and Tancredo, Senator John McCain, was a very credible second place with 303,639 votes. Governor Huckabee, who had actually enacted legislation which could be construed as benefitting people who had entered illegally, took first place with 326,069. Call that a 585 to 1 differential against Hunter and Tancredo.
The Far Right Opinion Machine got one small victory in 2008. Proposition 8 failed in California. Judicial resources are going to be tied up for the foreseeable future, and anybody betting on prop 8's survival in the Golden State should be encouraged to send that money via The Wandering Gentile's Commode, P.O. Box Flush-Like-Rush, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
The Gay activist community may soon discover that they are better served by exacting revenge upon the talismen of conservatism. A few well placed ballot initiatives with regard to additional levies upon SUVs, McMansions, guns, and politically active faith communities in California could be much more effective than protesting in West Hollywood.
There is a country which already has many of the things that the Far Right Opinion Machine embraces already. This crucible should be seen as a oracle for the far right. That country has one of the lowest tax burdens in the world. Nativism has been an obstacle to diversity. The country has a strong relationship with a Conservative Christian community of both clergy and laity. Money is not spent on onerous schools or social programs. The wealthy have authority in all matters, and Mexicans are leaving in droves.
That country is Mexico.
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