Green Card Stories is a gem of a
book, and I feel inspired to write about it. Written by award winning
journalist, Saundra Amrhein, with stunning photographs by award winning
photographer, Ariana Lindquist, the book puts a human face on immigration through
the journeys of 50 individuals who got their green cards. My good friends,
Laura Danielson and Steve Yale-Loehr, produced the book with a lot of
dedication and tenacity. Hopefully, their hard work will reap rewards resulting
in more rational and humane immigration laws.
Most Americans, whatever their
view on immigration may be, tend to see immigrants whom they may know with a
different lens, especially if they are co-workers, friends, neighbors or
parents in the same school community. Even if immigrants may be demonized in
the current political climate, especially those who are undocumented, when one
gets to actually know this person, you
may probably not view him or her with the same bias. This is what Green Card
Stories tries to do. One gets to like the immigrants portrayed in the book even
if you do not know them in person. In fact, they all magically come alive when
you read their stories and the photographs also reveal facets that no amount of
words will ever tell.
Take the example of Francis
Price, who is photographed as a successful person meditating on his journey in his
well appointed home adorned with tasteful art. He came to the US from Jamaica
with $25 to become a businessman in the United States who also served as a
trustee of the University of Rochester, his alma mater. Somewhere along the way
after he received his green card and built businesses employing hundreds of
people, he was put into deportation when applying for citizenship because of
the mistake of his lawyer in Jamaica who had not finalized his divorce to his
former wife. It was thus discovered after several years that he wrongfully entered
as the single son of a sponsoring parent when he was actually married.
Fortunately, while in deportation, his current US citizen wife again sponsored
him for a green card, while he applied for a waiver to forgive the past
violation, and the Immigration Judge again granted him the green card.
Or Gulnahar Alam, whom I
represented pro bono, who escaped a
horrific domestic violence situation in Bangladesh, only to find herself working grueling domestic
jobs for families in the New York area. She applied for political asylum and
won, being one of the first to assert that domestic violence constituted a form
of persecution. Today, she is a well known advocate on behalf of immigrant domestic
workers, won several awards, and works
for a diabetes education project among minorities at New York University.
There is also the amazing story
of Mikel Murga from Spain, who now teaches at MIT, and who got his green card
three times. He abandoned his first green card after returning to his country,
but gave up the second green card, so that his minor son could accompany him as
a derivative under the third green card. While most immigrants are lucky to be
able to get green cards just once, Murga is quoted while looking quite the
professor in his portrait, “That’s what makes America unique – not how rich it
is, they say there are many opportunities, but the most important opportunity
is the opportunity to reinvent yourself.” There are 47 other equally inspiring
and poignant stories, including one on Jerry Yang who went on to found Yahoo.
Read them.
Putting
a human face to immigration is the best way to convince others about who they
are and the benefits they bring to this country through their struggles,
inspiration, ambition and successes. It is also an effective way to counter the
lies about immigrants espoused by a loud and vocal minority. The canard against
immigrants is an old one. This is what the first Select Committee of the House
of Representatives to study immigration concluded in the 1850s:
that the
number of emigrants from foreign countries into the United States is increasing
with such rapidity as to jeopardize the peace and tranquility of our citizens,
if not the permanency of the civil, religious, and political institutions of
the United States… Many of them are the outcasts of foreign countries; paupers,
vagrants, and malefactors….sent hither at the expense of foreign
governments, to relieve them from the burden of their maintenance.
One would have thought that this kind of sentiment would have ended by
the second decade of the 21st century, but don’t we hear the same
things about immigrants today? Today, it
is fashionable in some quarters even by Presidential candidates, members of
Congress and state officials to espouse attrition by
enforcement, which is a policy to make life so harsh, brutish and
unbearable for undocumented immigrants that they will “self deport” themselves.
Acknowledging that it would be very costly, if not impossible, to deport the
millions of undocumented immigrants, a May 2005
report of Center of Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration organization,
writes this in support of attrition:
But there is a third way that
rejects this false choice, and it is the only approach that can actually work:
Shrink the illegal population through consistent, across-the-board enforcement
of the immigration law. By deterring the settlement of new illegals, by
increasing deportations to the extent possible, and, most importantly, by
increasing the number of illegals already here who give up and deport
themselves, the United States can bring about an annual decrease in the
illegal-alien population, rather than allowing it to continually increase. The
point, in other words, is not merely to curtail illegal immigration, but rather
to bring about a steady reduction in the total number of illegal immigrants who
are living in the United States. The result would be a shrinking of the illegal
population to a manageable nuisance, rather than today's looming crisis.
This is analogous to the
approach a corporation might take to downsizing a bloated workforce: a hiring
freeze, some layoffs, plus new incentives to encourage excess workers to leave
on their own.
This attrition by enforcement
policy has spawned draconian anti-immigration laws such as Arizona’s SB 1070
and Alabama’s HB 56, which aim to banish undocumented immigrants from the state
even though they may be pursuing legal status under federal law or legitimately
defending themselves in federal removal proceedings. Their goal is to make it a
crime if it is suspected that a person is in the state unlawfully (even though
under federal law some may remain in the US), for not carrying documentation,
and for harboring and transporting unauthorized immigrants. HB 56 goes further
by requiring children to provide proof of immigration status prior to
enrollment in public schools, and restricting unauthorized immigrants from
engaging in contracts and business transactions. Many of these nasty provisions
have been temporarily blocked for now, but they can gain a new lease of the
life if the US Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of such laws later
this year.
Tellingly, many of the people
profiled in Green Card Stories could have been snared under these draconian
state laws or stricter federal laws prior to getting their green cards. Their stories also show how terribly complex our immigration laws can be, and how easily someone can fall through the cracks. Even
while there may be anti-immigrant sentiment, what is most touching in many of
the stories is how they were helped by the kindness of strangers in America,
which has left a lasting impression on them. The more stories we tell about
immigrants desiring to do well in America for themselves and their children,
the less scope will there be for politicians and hate groups to dehumanize them
in the abstract. After all, immigrants are people, like everyone else, with the
same dreams, aspirations, vulnerabilities and frailties. The policies of
attrition and self-deportation view undocumented immigrants as vermin that can
be quietly driven away notwithstanding the fact that they have loved ones here
and have set down strong roots. However, this is less likely to happen if
Americans get to know them more from their stories. It is only then that more
Americans will come to realize that the better solution is to reform our broken
immigration system that would be able to tap into the industry and aspirations
of immigrants of all stripes, such as the ones in Green Card Stories, rather
than to deport them - and everyone will be better off.
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