When fear becomes a policy
Our national debate on immigration is complex, multi-faceted and shouldn’t come down to fear.
Earlier this month, I went to an interfaith celebration and a woman stood up.
She was scared, she said, and wanted support: Her husband was undocumented and had been told he needed to register and carry papers.
I didn’t know the woman, and didn’t get a chance to speak with her afterwards. From what I could tell, though, she seemed like a typical middle aged American. I could see she felt helpless, alone. There was fear in her voice.
Fear – that is the overarching word I think about when it comes to our country’s current debate about immigration. There is the fear that the Trump administration is instilling about our borders and security – and the fear that millions of people are facing during an aggressive crackdown that many have correctly pointed out lacks due process and legal protection.
In California, the woman I encountered is hardly alone: Pew Research Center estimates approximately 1.8 million people in California are undocumented. That’s about 5% of the state’s total population. It’s easy to say someone shouldn’t have broken the law to come to the United States without papers. The stories I’ve heard are almost always more complex.
I’ve been reluctant to write on the topic of immigration without talking to someone directly about their journey, to tell their story. It is an issue that is immensely complex and multilayered. Full of nuance.
The actions of the Trump administration, though, are making that desire harder. The actions are not nuanced, they’re much more black and white and they’re having a chilling effect.
People are afraid to talk for fear of being targeted. So much so that even when people previously posted their stories on Facebook, and even when their stories include someone here legally (like those of Venezuelans, who fled socialist oppression, who obtained visas and now are facing possible deportation), there is a reluctance to share. Some have even deleted previous social media posts and their accounts.
A Nation of Immigrants
My maternal grandmother was a war bride from Ipswich, England. She married my grandfather who was in the U.S. Air Army Corps, under the threat of war. She spent her formative years running to a bomb shelter, and working on the war effort.
She had saved her ration cards to buy a wedding dress. She got married with the war raging. It was after they had their first daughter, my aunt Carol, that my grandmother would take the leap of faith and journey on a boat from England to the United States, where she would regret she had weaned her infant daughter before the journey, when the ship was low on food.
For her, coming to America was a symbol of freedom. Freedom from the bombs that attacked her, from the mindset of oppression of the Nazis that Americans fought against, from a childhood where she lost her brother in the war and learned hard lessons of the evils of global powers at play.
There was no stigma to my grandmother’s immigration to the U.S., even if the journey itself was a leap of faith.
When she came here, she lived her life in a post-war era, she had converted to Catholicism for her husband, my grandfather. I thought of them when I learned yesterday that Pope Francis died. When my grandfather Col. Cletus Pottebaum was based in California years after the war, he was involved in fundraising for and building a Catholic church. A Catholic church now that undoubtedly serves a community that includes those who are undocumented.
A Pathway to Nowhere
I was driving in Los Angeles recently and a radio advertisement with Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security (and known dog killer) came on the airways. Leave this country, she was saying, to those who are undocumented. If you leave, she promised, there is a pathway.
It sounds so clear except – it’s not at all. Starting with: What is the pathway?
Under current law even if you marry a US citizen, if you entered the country illegally, you can’t just appeal for citizenship. You have to move back to the country from which you entered, and sometimes that can trigger a 3 to 10 year waiting period before you can apply for a green card. Citizenship can take 3 or more years. A friend of mine has a family member who waited 20 years for their citizenship.
If you’re a U.S. citizen and you want to go back with your spouse to their country, what’s the process there? It depends which country your spouse is from originally. Some fled here as children, don’t know the language of their home country, certainly don’t have family or friends remaining, or a community where they can wait. Some do have family remaining, family and situations they were fleeing.
If you aren’t marrying a U.S. citizen, and have lived here for 20 years, but now want to follow the protocol and leave the country to get back in. Is there an assurance that you will? It’s not that easy. Immigration laws haven’t been reformed my entire adult life. And the backlog of cases has only grown.
Moreover it’s an expensive process. Immigration attorneys, forms, filings. President Trump is now offering a $5 million “Gold Card” visa. How many of us have $5 million for a visa? Not me. Not my grandmother. Not the millions of Americans who expanded on the American dream.
The families I’ve met who are living here, sometimes with mixed status of immigration, came to America for the same reason my grandmother did: Freedom. They didn’t come here with $5 million in the bank to secure it. They moved with a desire to work hard, and that work has always paid off for America.
Move Beyond Fear
What can we do?
The stories I’ve heard of those who are here undocumented almost always have a component of desperation. Violence, starvation, war, conflict. There’s hope in America. The same hope of an American dream that so many in America feel is robbed from them.
Far too often it’s meant that groups are pitted against each other. Each worried that the American dream story can only be so big. Actions during the last 4 years only, where Governors would selectively deposit migrants in cities that would end up pulling from public resources instead of finding family reunification pathways or leaning on our religious institutions, only made that more felt. The fear is if the American dream is given to another, it won’t be available for them.
But that’s not the story of America. The story of America has been groups of America immigrating, overcoming biases and attempts to demonize them, and building their own communities adding to our country’s economy and opportunities.
With each generation of immigrants, our power as a nation has grown. There have always been growing pains. But immigration is what makes the United States truly unique. We can’t lose sight of that. Or, worse, walk away from these values, founding ideals of our country, based on fear. And we can’t do so without a clearer articulation of what it is we’re trying to do.
When I talk to my friends who support President Trump they often talk about porous U.S. borders and illegal immigration — but don’t really have an explanation for what to do beyond increase enforcement or follow current laws. Enforcement alone is not a pathway — it’s just fear. And the reason we have so many waiting in the system is current laws aren’t working.
I’m still thinking about that woman. So much should have been done in the last 30 years to solve this problem, we absolutely have to bring people out of the shadows, and give people a pathway to citizenship that doesn’t take just as long.
But I go back to what can we do? With so many silenced, filled with fear and uncertainty, the first step, for those of us who can, is to use our voices to say it’s not alright. We deserve more than fear. We should find pathways for collective opportunity. And I know there are people on both sides of the aisle who believe that.