Immigration decision needs compassion and fairness – Journal Star, Peoria, IL – 04/16/2006

 

My sixty-seven year old aunt, principal of a school in India, was among a couple of Indian educationists chosen to attend a two-week seminar in America. On her arrival here, she pleaded for a week’s extension of visa to visit me, her favorite nephew. The request was unceremoniously denied. My colleague, also a Permanent Resident, applied to bring his aged mother for a visit. The request was rejected twice on the basis that she was a ‘possible immigrant’. The web abounds with thousands of such tales of power wielded with seemingly unreasonable harshness.

 

Millions of legal immigrants like my colleague and me have gone through the agonizing process of finding a job in America, applying for and renewing, year after year, our employment visas. We have stood in lines at the American embassies all over the world, feverishly dreading the red ink of the ‘Rejected’ stamp. We have spent sleepless nights over the Employment Authorization and the Advanced Parole, which is basically a travel permit but makes us sound like criminals out on bail. Our spouses have opened and shut our mailboxes a thousand times over the years, waiting, hoping, looking for that magical piece of paper, the Green Card approval, which will grant them the right to work and put their qualifications and experience to use. Subsequently, we have to wait for almost five years more to start the excruciating journey to citizenship, to the fulfillment of a dream that was cherished in so many hearts and prayers. Workers who do not obtain Green Cards have to return home after six years, abandoning the lives they have built here.

 

Today, when I look at the television images of half a million people protesting on the streets, my first reaction is one of outrage. Their protest seems a personal affront, a brazen mockery of my journey. At the end of it all, I will have a vote, a single pathetic vote that may be counted, but may never count. Here, eleven million seek to coerce the Congress of the nation to change its law.

 

I sit and write a blistering letter to the editor, bitterness welling up like bile in the throat. What is my sin? Or my colleague? What did my aunt do? Or my colleague’s mother? What are we being penalized for? Why are we called ‘Aliens’ while they are ‘Guests’?

 

There is insecurity and frustration too. Will we be pushed to the end of the line to accommodate those who jumped it? What will this do to citizenship quotas? With eleven million people ahead of us, will our turn ever come?

 

Fortunately, it is late and the email message never goes out, simply because it is incomplete. I have not yet poured my heart out completely. Dregs of resentment still linger, like the sour smelling grind at the bottom of my cup of coffee.

 

Unable to sleep, I read. I read about the ones who took the easy way in. I read the stories of heartbreak, of journeys that are more frightening than mine, of sacrifices that are more poignant, of entire lives lived in the shadows, without recourse, without hope. Despite myself, my heart goes out to them. Their dream is no different than mine, their longings as simple - the human pining for a dignified existence, a better life. Who am I to take the high moral ground? In the twisted, tormented, twilight world of immigration, I was just born luckier.

 

But there are the other sides to the story too, from people who are more balanced than I am, from people who bear the responsibility for this nation. It is not so simple.

 

There are the needs of business and economics that need to be fulfilled, but there are the laws of the land that need to be upheld. The letter of the law when not enforced will sometimes kill its spirit too. The wound of September 11 may have clotted but a fingernail is all that is needed to rake up the blood again. Terror lurks in the corners of the psyche, like a burglar under the awnings, waiting for you to sleep. How can we send our troops to guard the borders of other countries, when our own borders are unprotected? Eleven million is a large number and polarizes the arithmetic, dividing the nation and multiplying the politics.

 

Unfortunately, our leaders tend to drag such issues to the ballot box, like pet bears on leashes, making them do sad little tricks on the streets.

 

But I do not envy the ones who will decide. I hope with all my heart that decisions will be taken with compassion but with fairness.

 

And as sleep refuses to come, I wonder too, with a heavy heart, if there is such a solution at all.