Posted on 10/08/2005 2:44:36 AM PDT by Crackingham
From the Little League fields to the Habitat for Humanity boardroom, everyone in this central Missouri town seemed to know Manuel "Paco" Lopez. A devoted father and civic volunteer, the Mexican immigrant served as a translator at the local hospital, schools, crime scenes and anywhere else people asked. So when police asked for help interrogating a Spanish-speaking murder suspect, he dutifully agreed — even though it meant revealing he was actually an illegal immigrant named Francisco Xavier Inzunza.
Once Marshall police reported him, immigration officers made the 43-year-old an offer: work as a confidential informant for the federal immigration agency in exchange for an annual work permit. But his informant career was a spectacular flop. Drug dealers and fake identification peddlers didn't want much to do with a church leader and school volunteer. Soon after the murder suspect's conviction in 2002, Inzunza was informed he faced deportation from the place he has called home for a dozen years.
The Marshall mayor, police chief, school superintendent — even the prosecutor who Inzunza helped — pledged to support a man who for years hid his true identity.
"Most of the illegal aliens stay in the background. They don't get out," said Chuck Hird, a retired Marshall meatpacking plant manager. "Paco was different. That's what got him in trouble."
Sixteen supporters appeared at a Kansas City immigration hearing in September, prepared to ask a federal judge to let Inzunza stay. The judge instead postponed the hearing until February 2007 because of a case backlog, but Inzunza's supporters suspect judicial sympathy played a role.
Even Gregory Gagne, spokesman for the Justice Department's executive office for immigration review in Washington, reacted with surprise. He said the delay was longer than normal.
In an interview in the cramped apartment he shares with his wife, Suzy, and sons Francisco Javier, 17, and Anthony, 10, Inzunza said he has no regrets about helping Saline County prosecutors convict Juan Antonio Rodriguez of stabbing a housemate to death.
"I did it because it was the right thing to do," he said. "They needed me."
On a different thread, concerning Katrina, I posted a story about a 3-4 car convoy of approx 30 illegal immigrants, men women and children, mostly families.
Reading their tale of how they made it out of New Orleans to Houston (that alone was a three day "grapes of wrath" journey), how they revealed their true status at the first official evacuation center they stopped at in Houston, knowing that made them ineligible for most direct government help, how they were aided by a church in Houston, restarted their oddysy to go back across the hurricane battered gulf area to get to Georgia where one from their group had a relative, praying all the way that none of their three old cars would get stopped for anything, making their connection in Georgia days later after living and sleeping all the time in their cars, meeting some more nice church people in Georgia and (to advance this story along) how within three weeks after Katrina most of the adults had some kind of job and all the kids were in church sponsored day care.
Meanwhile, thousands of "legal" American citizens are waiting for the bureacratic red tape to tell them where they can live and how much money they are entitled to and for how long.
But the "illegal" convoy to Georgia had no guarantee of anything, anywhere accept their own determination to survive. And they have not only survived, they are already building new lives.
I don't know where it leaves my conviction that the border must operate as a true border, and that illegal immigration is destructive to our government and our soverignty in many ways.
I do know that it showed me something about the illegal immigrants that I think George Bush sees.
My wife's an immigrant (now U.S. citizen), as are most of her close friends, so I could tell you dozens of stories that are equally moving.
With the exception that my wife and her friends are legal immigrants. Which makes their stories all the more impressive.
By gum, you're right. If it was the lily white Dutch or Irish I'd feel so much better.
I have proposed some solutions similar to the ones you are proposing.
The reason why some on Free Republic can't or won't be pragmatic about the mass migration we are witnessing is because they are afraid, rationally, of the future.
What we are witnessing is a mass migration. If we open the borders, we can reasonably expect 10 million per year or more for the next few years. This enormous number of culturally different people will have enormous implications for the future of our country.
It will not be possible to assimilate this number of people into our country.
There will be enormous culture clashes, and the immediate reality will be uncomfortable and unpleasant.
Once the numbers of foreigners reach a certain mass, we can expect riots and lawlessness as the immigrants, through the security of sheer numbers, exercise demands of all kinds upon the existing communities. Pandering by political parties will be exacerbated and make matters worse.
This is reality too, and I understand the fears.
We need a very controlled access to come in.
So???? He should therefore be allowed to simply break US law and remain a benefactor of illegal activity?? I think not. Deport him.
Well that's exactly the point: they can't
And they will just have to live with that and move on with their lives.
Hey, I'd personally like to emigrate to a particular foreign country, because I really like it there.
But getting a resident visa there would be difficult, and I would never, ever become a legitimate citizen. A second-class expat at best.
We all have to live with the cards we're dealt, unless we want to become criminal illegal aliens.
In most countries you would pay a very heavy price for that decision, including jailtime and hefty fines.
ping
A lot falls through the cracks of the INS bureaucracy. On the other hand perfectly legal, respectable and upright immigrants are forced to spend thousands upon thousands with immigration lawyers to get them through INS hell. For themselves or to bring a wife or daughter here. US citizens can have to go through INS hell to bring a wife, son or daughter here
I would not dispute your stories, nor that in those stories the people came here legally.
And the story I read of the "illegals" did not change my view that I want all immigrants to come here legally.
However, as harsh and suffering as the tales of any legal immigrants may be, and as much as I want our border to be a functioning border, where other laws may prevail on the other side, but our Constitution and laws prevail on our side,
the illegals operate, moment by moment, day by day, year by year WITHOUT THE BENEFIT OF THE LAW unlike the legal immigrant. The factor of "the law" is not simply on one side or the other in their lives - it is, mostly, out of their reach. And yet, they risk everything because of that fact and they still strive to survive in spite of it.
I want to end the illegal immigration and our porous borders. But, if I were fighting in Falluja, I would want one of those "illegals" who joined up to get his citizenship fighting right next to me. I know damn well there is NOTHING he will fail to do to try to survive. Many U.S. citizens and many legal immigrants do not have that total conviction to their own survival and a willingness to do anything to achieve it.
Yuh, right. "All illegal immigrants are brave and good and wonderous, and only some Americans and legals immigrants are the same."
Very romantic, but such a patently idiotic assertion that it demands no further comment.
Except to say that the only distinction between an illegal and legal immigrant in terms of wanting more, wanting better in America is this: the law.
Your romanticized illegal aliens are criminals. Period.
Who needs borders? Who needs immigration laws? Who needs soveregnity?
Please publish your address so we can send the bill for their education, health and infrastructure to you.
You and your kind are going to be the destruction of the USA.
You've heard my travails in the past dennis (now finished, thank God) so I won't belabor the point.
But yes, the U.S. immigration system is probably more onerous on the U.S. citizen than on the immigrating (spouse, child, relative) because you are suddenly thrown into a multi-year equivalent of the Department Of Motor Vehicles, an IRS audit, and some sort of minor criminal charge. All at the same time.
It's not a pleasant experience, but you do learn a lot about immigration and the utter perversity of the CIS (nee INS).
You've heard my travails in the past dennis (now finished, thank God) so I won't belabor the point.
I remember your account and that of others here at Free Republic.
Please comment:
There is a huge volume of illegal immigrants and visa overstayers trying to regularize their status with the INS. Meaning, with the help of an immigration lawyer they try to become legal residents of the USA. These people jumped over the legal immigration queue and are now gumming up the works, making the INS bureaucracy non-functional for the legal immigrants and US citizens who have cases with the INS
Bump and the prize for the most intelligent and succinct analysis of the issue to date.
Oh, gee, they had a middle class life in Mexico, and decided to use us - the US - so they could be more...comfortable. Now they're whining because instead of using us, we're using them.
Well. Let me get my cryin' towel.
"All illegal immigrants are brave and good and wonderous, and only some Americans and legals immigrants are the same."
You did, in your failed attempt to put words in my mouth.
He came into the country illegally. He is living illegally here. No matter how exemplary his life has been, while here, it is irrelevant, except to pandering presidents, and bleeding heart liberals... according to the LAW!
What do you not understand about ILLEGAL? He was not ignorant, unlike some posters. He sent his wife ahead, on false pretenses, then he took the dreaded journey through harrowing experiences. Of course, he just wanted a better life for himself, and his family. He's just like the 12,000,000 others that are here ILLEGALLY! I doubt if they are all murderers, and thugs. I do know that they have NO RIGHT to be here, or STAY HERE!
Throw him back to where he came from, so he can be an example to them!
Of course you didn't say it.
It's the inference one draws from your post, where you imply that it's legitimate to break U.S. immigration law so long as you are otherwise a good and honorable person.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.