Thread: NC - Immigration - What's legal and right

Immigration: What's legal and right

June 12, 2009 - 7:27 PM
By Janyth Fredrickson

Growing up in the 1950s, I remember the strange feeling of entering a restaurant with my parents that had a "whites only" sign in the front window. That same sign appeared at the dime store on the drinking fountain and the restroom doors.

Since my parents didn't talk about segregation at home, I had no idea how it impacted the lives of the few African-Americans living in my small Texas town. But years later, I met two women from there and learned that their challenges went far beyond exclusion from the local diner. Just to attend high school, they had to travel 70 miles each way to the nearest "blacks only" school while mine was in walking distance.

That was legal at the time, but it wasn't right.

I believe every generation responds to challenges in ways that society will later look back on and judge with a moral compass. One of our challenges today, of course, is immigration. We won't "solve" it any more than we "solve" education or national security. People have always moved for a variety of reasons, mostly economic, and always will. Rather, we seek to manage it wisely, and the way we do that tells a lot about who we are and what we value.

Of course we can't open our borders to everyone who wants to live here, but we can - and must - enact comprehensive immigration reform at the national level that addresses wrongs that exist today. While our maze of immigration regulations works for some, it prevents other worthy immigrants from ever gaining legal status. Instead, they face a grab-bag of local, state, and national ordinances that don't reflect the American values I cherish.

Here are a few examples of what some immigrants in Alamance County face.

Undocumented people can't get drivers licenses in North Carolina. So when a father goes to the grocery store to buy milk or eggs, he risks being stopped for a license check, apprehended, led away in handcuffs, found guilty of anything from driving without a license to security theft, jailed without bail somewhere in the nation for days or months, and deported without ever being allowed to return to his U.S. home. He has no rights to a lawyer unless his family can piece together many thousands of dollars for legal fees, an impossibly high barrier for most.

Undocumented immigrants are perfect victims for crimes. They aren't covered by workplace safety laws or minimum wage laws or child labor laws. If he is robbed, if she is raped or abused, the response after reporting the crime could be immediate arrest, imprisonment, and eventual deportation. Small wonder why some crimes go unreported.

But to me, the most compelling reason for comprehensive immigration reform is the children caught in the crossfire.

Consider 9-year-old Benjamin, an American citizen, who watched his dad taken from the house in handcuffs early one morning before school, not to return. His father was the lay minister of a small North Carolina church and had lived here for 20 years with a clean record. The youngster now sees law enforcement officers as bad men who take away parents. That isn't healthy for him or for our community.

Or the three young children whose dad pulled into a parking lot when his car overheated and was taken away in handcuffs after an officer stopped to see what was going on and questioned his documents. Without their father, the children - all American citizens - have begun to fall behind with schoolwork and experience hunger for the first time, since he was the family's sole support.

Or 16-year-old Ana, considered an "illegal alien" or "criminal" by some because she was brought to North Carolina without papers as a baby by parents hoping to give her a better life than she would have had in their dirt-poor village in Salvador. Soon she will graduate from a local high school - or not - and face a grim future. Legally, she cannot drive or work or have a social security card or get financial aid to continue her education, as her American friends are doing. Since this is the only home she knows, she will stay here and live in the shadows. If she is caught, she will be deported to a country she doesn't know.

I think of Ana and the dozens of other children brought to Alamance County as babies without proper documentation as "throw-away kids." I look into her face and don't know what to say. I want to shout, "This is not how America treats children." But it is how we're treating kids without proper papers.

It's legal but it isn't right.

Hopefully for the children, our representatives in Washington will act soon on comprehensive immigration reform. Until they do, it's our interactions with them and their parents that define what our values are, just as they did for my parents' generation during the time of segregation.



Janyth Fredrickson lives in Burlington.


comments:


somethinlikethat wrote:
Where do I begin? There is so much sadness in this piece that I can hardly contain my emotions...(That is the purpose of the entire piece, right?)

First, let's recognize that the timing of this presentation is intended to correspond with the not-so-secret meeting taking place in DC on the 17th between President Obama and the Amnesty crowd, including LULAC, LaRaza, et.al. The purpose of this meeting is to make sure everyone is on the same page as they ram through the long-promised Amnesty bill.

Expect more such articles to be peppered throughout the nations media outlets over the coming days. Reports from Capitol Hill over the last two weeks substantiate the full-court press these organizations have underway to secure an amnesty for the estimated 30 million (mostly Hispanic) illegals.

Even now E-Verify is being whisked out of sight and potentially de-funded.

While there are but a few Americans left who may not have figured out which side of illegal immigration they come down on, no effort will be spared to garner empathy for the "plight" of our uninvited lawbreakers. Every voice MUST be magnified and multiplied to justify the AMNESTY plan that is doubtless about to be announced. Never mind justice, rule of law, will of the people, etc.

These sob stories are intended to convince the American people that enough minds have been changed to justify the abhorrent miscarriage of justice that is about to take place...and never mind the details or the truth....just pour on the sympathy and throw caution to the wind.

Speaking of truth, let's put a few of Janyth Fredrickson's preponderances under the microscope and see if they pass the litmus test of fact or if they are exaggerated fiction.

Example one: In Janyth's first story, the "father" going for milk or eggs has no driver's license for very sound and lawful reasons. Go figure that Janyth cannot fathom how this might be, living in this cruel and overbearing society governed by the rule of law. That could also explain how Janyth misrepresents (I'm sure through no fault of her own) the fact that the individual has no opportunity for bail, or no "right" to a lawyer (oh, there was mention of that pesky little detail about money; the same money everyone else has to pony up to get representation).

Fact check Ms. Fredrickson, if you break the law you go to jail....that applies to everyone regardless of citizenship status. If you happen to be found to be here illegally in the course of booking you for another criminal act, then you should rightly be remanded to the custody of the proper authorities and deported. It also bears mention that most criminal aliens apprehended in Alamance County stay in Alamance County until their deportation hearing elsewhere (usually Atlanta, at which time they are transported to that court for further action. They are not (as your column implies) subjected to rendition and immediately whisked away to some secret location for interrogation and isolation. They (illegal aliens) are also afforded representation through various illegal immigrant support groups and organizations like ACLU and others, who by the way have millions of bucks at their disposal. Our typical domestic run-of-the-mill petty criminals should be so lucky...

In Jaynth's second tear-jerk scenario she portrays illegal alien crime victims as ultimately subject to deportation for coming forward to report a crime. Such pontifications are utter nonsense, absolute fiction, and worst of all they perpetuate the fear in the illegal community that actually causes under-reporting.

As a matter of fact, what Janyth has effectively done by publishing this blatant lie is increase the likelihood of crimes against illegal aliens. Now we have a few more misinformed desperados out there who think (thanks to Janyth Fredrickson and the Times News) that illegals will not report crimes against them. Smooth move!

By the way Janyth, drop by a few of the local illegal immigrant employer's businesses and see if the state and federal workplace protection rules are posted prominently as required by law. You will find they are indeed applied to everyone in the workplace, be they legal or illegal residents.

As a matter of fact, some of the employers may not even know the illegals are among their workforce (though that is doubtful except through acts lending plausible deniability). Actually, the potential violations of the laws you mentioned would have to be originated and facilitated by the illegal immigrants themselves, particularly in the case of child labor laws. Remember those nasty old fake IDs that have become so problematic?

On to 9 year old Benjamin. You conveniently left out the reason his dad was arrested, although you plastered the occasion with a flowery veneer of accolades for the father.

Should the reader wrongfully assume that someone in local government came down to the father's name on a Nazi-like hit list and sent forth the jack-booted enforcers to wrest the humble man from the young lad's weeping grasp, or might logic prevail and we be permitted to assume an actual crime was involved?

As for the 20 year lay-pastor qualifier, it might be assumed that a true Christian (was the church Christian?) would be under the burden of conviction for having dismissed the rule of authority and welcome the opportunity for repentance. I do not envy the followers of a "minister" who has spent most of his adult life living a lie.

The "three young children" story is little better in differentiating fact from fiction. Exactly what "documents" were questioned? A driver's license perhaps? Would an officer requesting identification in the form of an operators license be so outrageous to a law abiding citizen? I think not.

Could there have perchance been an outstanding warrant for failure to appear that surfaced when the gentleman's name was checked? Did he have a valid registration or even vehicle insurance? None of this information was given, and so I suggest this story too exceeds the limits of good taste and is not worthy to be called news. Garnishing it with human suffering however, does make it palatable and emotive until you look beyond the impact it had on the characters on stage and view the possibilities beyond the time line horizon.

Too often the pity invoked through such stories disguises the dangers associated with ignoring the laws in place to protect our citizens. Let us not forget the recent motorcycle death of a loving father at the hands of just such a scofflaw as little Benny's dad or the father of "three children".

Now about young Ana, who admittedly had little to do with her predicament originally. First and foremost we need to remember that her parents are culpable and bear sole responsibility for the difficulties facing Ana. Ana is not a "victim" of our society, and only the most foolish among us will play into that nonsense.

Second, Ana has a far better opportunity for success in her native El Salvador thanks to the generosity of Americans who financed her education and perhaps far more through social welfare programs she may/may not have participated in. (Free school lunches cost American taxpayers in excess of $2 billion per year alone). In El Salvador, a bi-lingual (assumed) citizen with an American K-12 education can slot in well above entry level pay grade and find work easily. Compare that to entry level opportunities in the current US economic climate! I'd say Ana is in a better position right now than her American counterparts, wouldn't you?

So much for the empathy...and shame on you Janyth for thinking of her as a "throw away kid". Clearly you are not insightful enough to be writing guest columns for the local (or any other) paper, and hopefully this will be your last contribution to the degradation of American values and destruction of civil society.
6/13/2009 2:08:35 PM

http://www.thetimesnews.com/articles/ch ... rents.html

I agree with the comment poster 100 percent and I love an eloquent tearing apart of another of these sob stories.

Most mainstream daily papers usually give some descriptive background information about a new or infrequent guest columnist. Allow me to fill in the the omitted work for the Burlington-Times News.

Fredrickson is a retired high level administrator from Alamance Community College, a shill for the Dream Act, and a member of the Burlington-Alamance County Sister Cities Program with some city in Mexico.

Most of of the illegal aliens who are living and working here are here with dependents and anchor babies. When they talk about not deporting illegals due to separating families, then hardly any would be deported, because most of them have their families with them.

Of course we can't open our borders to everyone who wants to live here, but we can - and must - enact comprehensive immigration reform at the national level that addresses wrongs that exist today. While our maze of immigration regulations works for some, it prevents other worthy immigrants from ever gaining legal status. Instead, they face a grab-bag of local, state, and national ordinances that don't reflect the American values I cherish.

This is why we should heavily enforce immigration laws! Why should those who came illegally be rewarded, while those who wait be penalized?

ENFORCE AND DEPORT!