Confessions Of An Illegal Alien

July 21, 2010 by John Myers
Confessions Of An Illegal Alien

I believe Arizona’s Immigration Law S.B. 1070 is going to be damn effective. In fact I think it should be adopted across the United States. What special insight do I have into the matter? I used to be an illegal alien.

Twenty-seven years ago this month I was sitting at my desk in the Peyton Building in downtown Spokane, Wash., and I got a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). I jerked it open and realized my worst fears. My work visa had not been extended.

Immigrating to the United States had been a disaster right from the start, even though it shouldn’t have been. My dad, C.V. was a U.S. citizen by right of his father being born in Oklahoma. At least that’s what the U.S. State Department said when they issued C.V. a U.S. passport.

Yet INS thought otherwise. They hadn’t forgotten that C.V. had sold gold to Americans when it was illegal for them to own it. INS wanted to deport him. It was a legal fight that would take a decade to resolve. In fact a U.S. Federal judge finally ruled in C.V.’s favor a few months after his death in 1990.

But on that day in 1983 the only thing that mattered was the letter on my desk; the letter that said I had to leave the U.S. or face deportation. It didn’t matter that I had paid my taxes, bought a house and that my wife and I had an American-born son.

Despite the fact my dad was ill I decided that I didn’t really have a choice. Better to move back under my own terms than to be roped-up like a criminal and be “escortedâ€