Posted on 07/07/2018 8:08:45 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The late Charles Krauthammer was right about the rules of good writing. The use of the first-person pronoun in opinion writing is a cardinal sin.
To get a sense of how bad someone's writing is count the number of times he or she deploys the Imperial "I" on the page. Krauthammer considered a single "I" in a piece to be a failure.
Use "I" when the passive-form alternative is too clumsy. Or, when the writer herself has earned the right to, because of her relevance to the story. (The story itself, naturally, should have relevance.) The second is my excuse here.
As a legal immigrant to the U.S., now an American citizen, I have a right to insert myself into the noisy narrative.
As a legal immigrant who was separated from her daughter, herself a legal immigrant, the onus is on me to share a scurrilous story that is part of a pattern:
America's immigration policy—driven as it is by policy makers and enforces—exalts and privileges those of low moral character. It rewards law-breakers, giving them the courtesy and consideration not given to high-value, legal immigrants.
The same U.S. immigration law enforcers who cater so kindly to each illegal immigrant—the kind that is a drain on the country and has no right to be in the country—stripped my daughter of her American permanent residency privileges.
A young person travels alone and gets bamboozled at the border-crossing in Blaine, Washington State. So, they strip her of her green card.
That's our immigration story.
My girl was studying in Canada. She got intimidated at the border and gave the wrong answer to her petty American inquisitor. So, she was quick-marched into a small booth and peppered with more questions meant to terrify.
With an intimidating display of machismo, the burly men of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) bullied a young girl into relinquishing her right of permanent residency (also the road to citizenship).
La Bandida was at bay. America was finally safe.
More fundamentally, hers was not an ill-gotten green card.
The principal sponsor, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, had entered the U.S. on an O-1 visa. Unlike the H-1B visa,the 0-1 visa doesn't replace Americans; it adds to them. For it is granted to those with "extraordinary ability in the fields of science, education, business or athletics." The O-1 necessitates "a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of the small percentage who has risen to the very top of the field of endeavor."
Not by deceit did my child gain her green card. But by deceit is how the swarms on the border will get theirs. The squeaky wheels squatting on the southern border, funneled daily into the interior to create facts on the ground, are notrefugees or legitimate asylum seekers. Rather, they are merely from what President Trump has termed "s--thhole countries." By that criteria, Americans could be forced to welcome the world.
A refugee, conversely, is an individual who is persecuted on the basis "of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion."Like my South-African compatriots, who, every day, are culled like springbok in a hunting safari. But for South Africans, U.S. refugee and immigration authorities reserve their unalloyed prejudice.
Back to la bandida .Was my daughter allowed a phone call to her parents? No! What about access to an immigration attorney? No!
A well-behaved, legal resident, who did not enter the USA to cause trouble, this young lady obeyed the laws of the country. She did not defy its enforces. Timidly, she accepted her lot.
Our daughter had her hard-won green card stripped by state bullies because she gave the wrong answer to a trick bureaucratic question.
Her case, no doubt, was further hindered by the fact that she simply was not a sympathetic "type." After all, she speaks good English, was attached to productive people, residing lawfully in their own home in the U.S., mere hours away. And she is not of a more exotic persuasion. At least not visibly so.
No, not simpatico at all.
So, she was tossed out of the United States of America like so much trash.
I hazard that had my daughter spoken in tongues or rendered a "good" Pidgin English; had she cried, created a scene; called for the presstitutes and the immigration advocates—she'd have "passed" with flying colors and would have been sent on her merry way.
It's as though people of early American probity, to paraphrase writer Mary McGrory, are carefully and purposefully weeded out by contemporary America's immigration policies and policy makers. (Until Trump.)
Indeed, we South Africans are just not part of the "multicultural noise machine," now sitting on the southern border seething with rage, poised to make common purpose with America’s professional merchants of racial hatred.
We are not pushy. We do things the right way. And we swallow the pain and indignity.
All this was in 2006 or thereabouts, shortly after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) changed its name to USCIS. Only now, in 2018, has mother (me) been able to "share my story." (There's another vernacular tumor that should be excised by all decent editors.)
"Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande," roared George W. Bush, at the time.
El presidente forgot to mention that family values do stop with the decent, documented residents of the United States.
Wow. That sucks.
Not the question.
Sorry I wasn’t clear.
Why did she have to wait til now to tell the story ?
“Her story would be better if it were comprehensible.”
Thank you! I read thru it twice and still have no idea what happened.
Way back in the day when I was taking journalism classes in college, we were always taught to ask, and answer, the basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? and How?
I miss those days!
George W. Bush only cared about his father’s Plan for North Mexico (aka USA) and that requires Spanish speaking people.
#5. I think Raiderboy is a Troll who likes to cause trouble by stirring up FR people with his deliberately antagonistic writing.
I’ve seen his stuff before and it is unworthy of the FR site.
Time for Jim to do a little sleuthing and find out who Raiderboy really is.
“All this was in 2006 or thereabouts, shortly after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) changed its name to USCIS. Only now, in 2018, has mother (me) been able to “share my story.” (There’s another vernacular tumor that should be excised by all decent editors.”
Hey, thats when W was President!
She is telling her story now because it DID happen,and without the whining and wailing from the press that is going on about things like that happening at the southern border-—she is just comparing her experience.
In other words her white,South African daughter had it happen——and no one in the media gave a damn.
.
Is this writer on meth?
Reporter: Miss Mercer, you just got your Green Card that allows to legally stay in the in the USA. What are going to do now?
Miss Mercer: *I'm going to Canada to study LGBTJSEZP issues.
Let her study in Canada? What’s wrong with that? <<
lol....
She posted it today, writing that the incident occurred in 2006.
or in her words.....
“...All this was in 2006 or thereabouts, shortly after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) changed its name to USCIS. Only now, in 2018, has mother (me) been able to “share my story.” (There’s another vernacular tumor that should be excised by all decent editors.)...”
Separated from your daughter how?? Doesn't make any sense. You're both adults as far as I can tell.
And just what might the question have been to which her daughter gave the wrong answer?
Regards,
Well, he is of Liberal persuation.
> “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” roared George W. Bush, at the time.
He was talking about “Family” values, not “family values”.
World of difference. And while the latter demonstrably does stop at the Rio Grande, the former demonstrably did not.
Story doesn't pass the smell test.
Her posting was deliberately vague, trying to be emotional without giving any facts as to why the big, bad immigration agent took away her green card.
You can only be outside the US for one year on a green card, or you lose it. Her daughter was probably asked how long she had been outside the US, and truthfully answered more than one year. It wasn’t a trick question - the only trick was that her daughter didn’t know she was supposed to lie :)
There’s a form you have to fill out before you leave the US if you want to be outside the US for more than a year on a green card - her daughter probably didn’t do this.
Ilana Mercer is just trying to gin up sympathy, without posting the real facts.
A PhD candidate with a O-1 visa, which means the United States government wanted her here, was harassed into giving up her visa at a border crossing. No higher authority was involved. She was not arrested, charged, or prosecuted for any crime. In the twelve years since, this woman did not get a attorney to pursue the matter. The college that got her the O-1 visa did not raise hell over this.
This story does not add up. This would have been a case immigration advocates would have jumped on back then. Even with the War on Terror, no federal agency wanted to be seen acting like secret police toward foreigners. This was also in Washington State, which has one of he strongest ACLU chapters in the country.
There is something very wrong here, and it's not the proofreading.
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