Illegal Aliens -- Another Side
Fri., October 5, 03:41 PM
You may have heard about the mayor's initiative in New Haven, to issue identity cards to people who have entered the United States illegally.
Without identification, these people are targets. For example, they cannot cash a check without paying a large extra charge. And since they cannot open bank accounts, they have to carry all their money with them. Of course, if/when they are robbed, they are afraid to report that to the police.
You may also have heard that many citizens oppose this practice. I know some of them. The ones I know are good people, with high moral standards. Personally, I have reservations on both sides.
I have known people who were illegal aliens, who reversed their situations and became law-abiding citizens. I'm the kind of person who tries to give others a chance, particularly when I don't know the conditions under which they arrived here in the first place. Were they brought here by people who told they it was perfectly okay, that they would have jobs and be legal? It is not difficult for people to be misguided. Maybe I'm affected by my own background.
After all, I can't trace my ancestors back to the Mayflower. My own family did not come to this country until the twentieth century. I know when my mother got here, because I found a ship's manifest listing my grandmother and her five children. But her husband, my grandfather, was already here to meet the ship, and I can find no record of his entry. (It couldn't have been very long previously, because the baby was barely a year old!) My father's parents were here about twenty years before that, and I don't find any record of their entry either; I searched under every misspelling of their name I could think of. But they lived, worked, ran businesses and paid taxes in the same area for thirty years; I could find them in old city directories. Nevertheless, they don't turn up on any genealogy sites. I know there's a little discrimination going on here.
In any case, my father was born in Connecticut, and my mother was a naturalized citizen; I have legal evidence that I was born in Connecticut too. But could any of my grandparents been illegal? Should they have been deported? If they had been, you realize, I might never have been born. I certainly would not have lived long in Europe of that time. Yes, that does color my perspective.
Oh, sure, I know that there also are people who sneaked into this country without the good intentions that my grandparents had. I am well aware that there are criminals among the illegals. But you can't judge any group by just some of the individuals within the group. (You do realize that U.D.'s tattoos scare the homeless, even when she's offering them money!) This is a real problem for me. I wonder whether we might not want to give them ID's anyhow. If we did, at least we might know where to find them when we have to.
There is yet another consideration: how regimented do we want to be? The Nazis were all in favor of every citizen carrying papers. Are we going in the wrong direction? But there are just too many of us now. What percentage of the people you meet in the course of a day are people you actually know? I can remember a time when you didn't need a picture ID to vote, because there was bound to be some official at the polls who recognized you and knew you by name. That doesn't happen now.
We have spent our lives being taught to recognize the best in everyone, only to discover that some people have no “best.” I just don't know the answer. I hoped that I might get a clue from writing it out, but I didn't.
