My American Tale

 

I am a U.S. Citizen. I was born here, educated here, and I am a productive member of society. Yet my country may soon be denying me a family.

Over seven years ago I married a beautiful woman who has three great kids. They, and my own two children are what makes my world turn. Unfortunately, my wife is an undocumented immigrant. She has lived and worked here for many years, and two of her three children were born here, but when her visa is up in 2013, I have no idea what is to become of my family. Currently there is no path to uniting my family in the United States outside of her leaving the country.

According to our laws she must return to Mexico, file her paperwork, pay her fees and wait to be called. She may or may not be given preferred status as the spouse of a U.S. citizen. We have been given no guarantees. She may or may not be barred from entering the U.S. for ten years as a result of her stay here without proper paperwork. There are a lot of maybes in our future. One thing is certain; if she is not permitted to stay here after 2013 my family is doomed.

Right now according to I.C.E. they are processing the applications of people who filed before April, 1993. That’s right– 1993. That is a 19 year lag in the application to approval process.

I am a United States citizen and according to our Constitution I am endowed by our Creator certain unalienable rights, “and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” yet it appears that our immigration laws are alienating my freedom to pursue the happiness of my family.

Why is it impossible for me to gain citizenship or even a visa for my family? Is this not America: land of the free? Am I not free to make my own family, or is the government going to put restrictions on us all, like they are doing with the same-sex marriage fiasco. If this is how we want to make up our families, we should have the freedom to do so, or we have no freedom at all, because at the heart of every civilization, at the core of any society, and the one thing each and every person on this planet desires most is to be a part of a family, and no one should be able to tell anyone else who can or cannot be a part of our own family.

For years we have permitted undocumented workers who made it to our doors to work inexpensively so that we may live more richly. Now, all of a sudden some people want them all to leave. They are acting like they never knew we had millions of undocumented workers in our country and are now raging mad because they find there are millions of them here.

Our system has been terribly broken for decades and we all have known it. There have been people working and living here without documentation for decades and not one of us can se we never knew. We all knew. We just didn’t really care. We were getting our meals cooked and our lawns cut and our cars washed very cheaply. It was good for us. Now, all of a sudden, it’s not?

This is our fault and It is our responsibility to fix it. We shouldn’t put the blame and the punishment on the people who were just working with what little we would give them. I shouldn’t be denied my family because of our inability to fix the immigration processes. I pay my taxes every year, and I vote in all the elections. Didn’t I pay the people I voted for to take care of these types of things?

If you take a step back and look at this situation dispassionately you will see that this whole problem stems from our government’s inabilities to fix this problem. All we needed was to change our laws and to institute the procedures to allow these people to come and do the work we so desperately needed. But they were too scared to do anything, so they kicked the can down the road a but further so someone else would have to deal with the problem and the resulting backlash that any solution is guaranteed to come packaged with.

Our Declaration of Independance states, “ That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It is my right to alter or abolish the government that threatens my family. I think it’s high time we did, and not just because my family is dependent upon whomever we elect to fix this situation, but because if we don’t–they won’t.

If I don’t do what I am paid to do, I will lose my job. Why is it that we permit our elected officials to remain employed when they do not do what we pay them for? And with all the posturing and strategizing the politicians are doing right now to get elected it becomes obvious that they are wanting to tell us what sounds popular, and what we want to hear. Unfortunately if we get distracted by all this hoopla, we will lose sight of a very important question: What have they done to deserve our vote? This is a much more convincing way of figuring out what they are going to do after they get elected. It really doesn’t matter what they may promise, they are going to do what they always have done anyway.

It is the job of our elected officials work to come up with solutions to the problems that vex our nation. For too long they have rested upon promises while taking lobbyist’s money for pork barrel lunches.  No longer should we elect people who we think are better than the others. We should make them show us why they are the better lawmaker.  And if they don’t live up to their promises, we just won’t elect them again. That is sure to send a message that no lobbyist can counter. Our votes will speak louder than their money. This is the way it always was supposed to work, but somehow we got lost in the sound-bites, news cycles and all the hype and glamour that comes with political election-year posturing. They need to be reminded they derive their power from us, not the corporations and lobbyists.

I am not going to vote for any incumbent until this situation gets resolved. If the economy or taxes or whatever issue that weighs the heaviest on your mind doesn’t get dealt with during the term of that politician, they should lose their jobs, just like we would. It shouldn’t take but one or two elections to figure out how this new system works, and we will be getting much more of the government that we have been paying for.

If you want a government that works for the people, it’s time for us to stop listening to why they can’t do what we elected them for, and time to make them prove they can.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/11/new-immigration-rules-are-cynical-political-move

an article about how people vote. Makes good point for this article.

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