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This is the Eye of Grace. This is where the world is set straight before your simple minds. This is where the shit hits the fan.
You are nothing without me.
E.T. - Go Home!
There seems to be a lot of opinions floating around lately about the future of illegal immigrants in the US. The reason this story is all over the news is, of course, that the House of Representatives is debating whether to propose a bill that would give amnesty to 15 million illegal aliens already living in this country. On one hand, people think it’s cruel to deport these poor people after they have made a life for themselves here in the US. On the other hand, they did come into the country the wrong way. What to do?
It’s hard, isn’t it? Figuring out what to do with all these illegal immigrants picketing in the streets for the rights to become American citizens. Look at all those hundreds of thousands of Mexicans marching up and down the streets of California, asking to be treated like everybody else. Couldn’t your heart just break for them? After all, they work “all those jobs Americans refuse to do”, right? Awwww…
Fuck them.
Fuck all those motherfucking illegal bastards. Now is the moment to drive up the INS trucks, load them up in the back, and drive them back across the border. Just pack ‘em up. Signs, protests, and all.
Whereas I, as an immigrant myself, should maybe show empathy for their situation, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever to spare. Why? Because I had to work my fucking ass off to get my green card by taking the straight and narrow road. Do you have the slightest idea how hard it is to get a Green Card in the US? How much time it takes? The amount of stress you constantly find yourself living under?
I came to this country on September 13th, 2001. It would have been September 11th, but for all the obvious and peculiar reasons (told here), that didn’t happen. Anyway… In July, 2002 I married my wife. She is all American, Brooklyn to the core and has a mouth to match. The day after we tied the knot I applied for my Permanent Residentship and also for Temporary Employment Authorization. See, as a relative (spouse) of an American citizen, you are eligible for residentship – as long as you pass all the rigorous INS check-ups. Since the application for residentship takes quite some time to be processed, you need a Temporary Employment Authorization in the meantime; this is just so you can go ahead and get a social security number and work on the books. In November 2003, 16 months later, I received that Temporary Work Authorization. Up until that point I had to find “other” means of employment. Not so very much in the spotlight, if you get my drift. Hey, family’s gotta eat, right? Well, as it turned out we sure didn’t eat much, and we sure as fuck couldn’t afford anything other than hanging on to the utility bills by the skin of our teeth, but we managed. Just about. It would be all worth it once I got those documents down the line and became a real provider for my family. That’s how we figured things. The kid would have to wait to be spoiled until that happened. My wife would have to take a pass on birthday gifts and romantic gestures that couldn’t be bought in the dollar store.
So, anyway, like I said, in November 2003 I get that Temporary Employment Authorization. The only problem is that I don’t get my social security card to go with it right away and, naturally, the Employment Authorization is not good without the social security card. So I go to the Social Security office and apply for the card and, lo and behold, in January 2004 I get that as well. I was now for the first time in 28 months on American soil actually eligible for on-the-books employment, just like you. The only problem was that the work authorization expired August 31st that same year. You would be surprised to see how few employers want to hire somebody on a short term basis like that. Especially in the line of work I was looking into. “You want to be a manager in our company for only six months or so? Including training? Sure, kid… We’ll let you know.”
At that point we had decided to move from New York to Florida anyway. I was working two, sometimes three, shit jobs to make ends meet, and still we were deep into foreclosure by the time the house was finally sold, barely paying off mortgage, back payments, and debts. I had to sell all my guitars, CDs, and valuables to scrape together money for rent and bills. My wife sold all her jewelry and her car. We, of course, had to cancel all medical insurances and other such luxurious privileges long before this. Now it’s July and I could only then apply to have my Employment Authorization extended (60 days before expiration date). Again, there’s a problem. Since the house is sold and we are leaving for Florida, I don’t have an actual address to give them yet. When I call INS - a 5 hour waiting on hold affair in itself (not exaggerating) - they tell me that I will have to wait to apply for anything until I am in Florida and can provide that actual address. And, by the way, they say, I should probably be getting my Permanent Residentship soon anyway, so maybe I don’t have to bother. OK, fine.
In October, 2004 we are established in Florida. I send in the forms for an extension of my Employment Authorization, which has now expired, and for the change of address. I wait, and wait, and wait. Nothing. The money we got from the sale of the house is slowly running through our fingers. We have paid rent for a year in advance and also done the same to the bills, but as for day to day life, we find ourselves again slowly approaching the same situation we were in before. Countdown to extinction. The money my wife makes as an online accountant for a couple of families back home doesn’t cut it as my mother-in-law, who lives with us, is now permanently disabled and has been without compensation for two years. Her pension is supposed to kick in “soon”, but meanwhile her medical care is bleeding us dry.
Throughout all this I constantly call the INS, but nobody knows anything. Not only can they barely speak English at that place, but they are also not “allowed” to look into your file. Only your case worker can do that and his identity is a secret for the sake of national security. Over time I have to file the application for my change of address three times because they first lost it and then apparently sent some vital documents to my old address in New York in January anyway, and I have to “request” that they transfer my “case” to Florida. I request. I apply. I nag. I call. Nothing…
All of 2005 passed by in a slow motion broke ass fever dream. Without my working papers, or resident papers, I couldn’t get a driver’s license. Without those papers I couldn’t even get a Blockbuster card. Without those papers I am fucking nothing. I got my finger bitten off by a certain dog, who shall remain nameless, and had to be rushed to the ER. They gave me a few shots of this and that and sent me home with a band aid and a bill for $3,000. I couldn’t afford the follow up surgery since the State Immigrant Medical Emergency Fund only helps illegal aliens in emergent situations. I was a legal alien without papers so I had fallen between the cracks. They could still bill me, though. Don’t doubt that for a second.
So why, you ask, didn’t I get an off-the-books job in 2005? Because of two reasons… number one, we didn’t wanna risk me getting caught so close to actually getting that elusive Green Card. Getting caught in such a situation would mean instant deportation and a ten year ban to re-enter the country. Number two, there are no fucking off-the-books jobs in this ridiculously over crowded state that the illegal immigrants don’t already hold. The off-the-books job market used to be a lucrative way for Joe Schmoe to make some extra bucks, but now they are all taken by the illegal Mexicans, Cubans, and Colombians. And they work for peanuts because they all live together in a big happy collective somewhere, 14 people in an apartment. They can afford to make $3 an hour if all 14 of them work ten hours per day. So, no… There are no off-the-books jobs in states with high illegal immigration. Forget about it.
You may think to yourself, in a state of confusion, “Why is it OK for him to work off the books anyway, but not for these illegal immigrants?” Easy, kid… I, and all other legal aliens with me, are put in that position by the INS, to either sink or swim. Do or die. We don’t have the luxury of a choice there. I came to this country with honest intentions and with all cards on the table. If I have to work off the books to feed my family, that should be my right as being a “citizen in the works”, rather than being some shady guy who swam across the river under the dark cloak of nightfall.
I finally got my Green Card in February of this year, 2006 – three and a half years after I applied, and during my fifth year of being in America. I did everything the exact way I should. I applied for the exact documents and submitted them perfectly filled in and in a timely fashion. Nothing I ever wrote or said to an INS agent was ever questioned or asked of me to clarify. I have a green past with no felonies or other ink spots in any protocols. Still, it drove my family to the point of absolute poverty and insanity to sail against that ever-blowing wind. I am 34 years old and have absolutely nothing to my name, except debts and bills. My resume reads as a big blank white page for the past five years. Oh yeah, potential employers LOVE that shit. It is only now that I have a fighting chance to “start over”. Can I do it? Hell, yeah. I can do anything I damn well please. I have earned that right.
Five years. That’s how damn long it can take for a straight arrow with a clean record and excellent personal references to achieve by legal means what the Government now want to give away to criminals.
So do I have any sympathy whatsoever for these fucking illegal bastards who jump a fence on the border in the middle of the night and then want to be on equal footing with me? Fuck them. If their little protest march happened to be accidentally mowed down by angry men in big tanks, I wouldn’t exactly shed a tear.
If the new immigration laws pass as is, now all these people, who never paid a goddamn nickel into social security during all their years as illegals, would all of a sudden be eligible for compensation if they were given “amnesty”? Since they have no “real” job with a “real” income? Yeah, right.
Amnesty for illegal immigrants…
Do you know what that would be like? It would be like giving amnesty to all car thieves while allowing them to keep their stolen Volvos and Ferraris, because, after all, they have been doing it for so long. Meanwhile, you have been working your ass off to pay off that fucking mini-van you bought five years ago.
Does that make sense? Does that seem fair to you?
Fuck no.
Round them up, send them home, and then lock the borders with triple locks. Dig mine fields and trenches and hang anybody making a run for it from the highest post at the border checkpoints to warn off others.
Amnesty for illegal aliens is an insult to all of us who have ever broken our fucking asses to earn the right to live in America the right way. It’s spitting in the face of a country that’s been used and abused by these illegal fuckheads for decades.
Propose a bill for Illegal Alien Work Camps, where they can work off their debts to society before getting kicked back across the Rio Grande, and I will be all there, picketing for the President to sign that fucker.
~ The Eye of Grace ~
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