If You are Illegal, Passport and Social Security Numbers in One Day

I spent three hours yesterday at the Consulate, trying to obtain a passport renewal for my 82 year old mother who wants to travel to visit her sister and brother she had not seen for a long time. It may be her last trip.

Because her passport had expired in 1998, it must be verified that she is still a Romanian citizen and that she has not given up her citizenship to another country without their knowledge, even though I provided them with her resident alien U.S. re-entry permit (a form of passport for legal immigrants) that also expired in late 90s, and her resident alien card.

The Consulate must check that she is a legal entity, that she exists, that she’s still a Romanian citizen, said the condescending clerk in the consular office, for the fee of $81 in cash.  How do they know that she has not sworn allegiance to another country in the interim?

After an alleged wait period of 60 days, she will be eligible for a new passport, providing that the right paperwork, filled out correctly according to bureaucratic speak, name and surname, her deceased parents, my deceased father, her life story, etc.  will be filed. I have no clue what the fee will be or how long that would take, hopefully her siblings will still be alive and mom will be ambulatory and/or able to travel.

But that is not all. I must then proceed with the renewal of her U.S. re-entry permit, facing the legal immigration bureaucracy gauntlet of the United States, and I have no idea how long that would take, considering the backlog of 4 million legal immigrants who are awaiting patiently the resolution of their cases, and the priority that the flood of illegal aliens from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador are receiving.

If mom was an illegal alien freshly arrived from Mexico, she would be getting her passport and visa on the same day, and from the Social Security office.

That is exactly what happened to a busload of Mexicans who arrived from Laredo in Memphis, Tennessee. According to the video posted by therightscoop.com, an American citizen confronted some of the members of the group who spoke no English, had been in the U.S. one day, but already had Social Security numbers and new Mexican passports issued not by the Mexican Consulate but by the Social Security office in Memphis. http://therightscoop.com/report-obama-admin-giving-illegals-new-passports-and-social-security-numbers-video/

As the videographer says in his citizen video, “They should get these [passports] in Mexico. We need jobs, we have no money in our country, we are giving it all away, and look at this, our tax dollars hard at work, there’s your bus full of people, there’s the Social Security office, and they are giving passports away to illegals.

Chances are, after writing about this egregious issue and the concerned American citizen videographer, my mom will never get travel papers from the United States.  

We have to stop the flood of illegal aliens into our country who claim bogus refugee status.  They are here for jobs because of bad economic conditions in their countries, and to receive welfare from the strapped American taxpayers. American businesses want illegals here for cheap labor, replacing American workers. We have our own severe economic problems in the United States and our middle class is struggling under the heavy burden of taxation, the loss of jobs, and the lack of job creation.

 

 

Permanent Legal Immigration vs. Amnesty

In 2011 1.1 million aliens received legal permanent resident (LPR) status on the basis of family ties (65%), employment (13%), as refugees and asylum seekers (16%), and as diversity migrants (5%), a category established arbitrarily since we already are the most diverse nation.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 established four reasons under which permanent legal immigration status can be sought:

-         Reunification of families

-         Immigrants with needed skills

-         Refugee protection

-         Diversity of admission by country of origin

Currently 4.5 million visas are approved for legal permanent residence (LPR) but are pending because of the numerical limits imposed by INA. Most of these are visas petitioned for the reunification of families.

The top countries of immigration were Mexico (14%), China (8.2%), India (6.5%), Philippines (5.4%), and Dominican Republic (4.3%). A large percentage of legal permanent residents came from the ranks of aliens who had temporary (nonimmigrant) visas.

Until 1965, there was a national origin quota system from World War I. It was replaced with an amendment of 7 percent per-country ceiling. The statute regulating permanent immigration was revised significantly in 1990.

If amnesty is going to be considered, the 113^th Congress should tackle first a Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) which should include the following:

-         Revise the legal immigration system first

-         Increase border security

-         Enforce immigration laws

-         Reform the temporary worker visas

-         Resolve the status of millions of illegal aliens already residing in the country, some with American born children, some who came legally and overstayed their visas, and those who crossed the border illegally to work, traffic drugs, commit crimes, or take advantage of the generous welfare system in the U.S.

-         Increase the number of visas to immigrants already waiting in the “queue” with on-going applications

The proposed “pathway to citizenship,” a mixture of fees, penalties, and waiting period, or blanket amnesty for illegal aliens could increase the cost of Obamacare up to $300 billion over a decade in the form of costs for exchanges or Medicaid. (http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/05/pathway-to-citizenship-may-increase-obamacare-cost-up-to-300-billion-over-a-decade/)

According to Ruth Ellen Wasem, who wrote a Congressional Service Report on legal immigration, published on December 17, 2012, adult children of U.S. citizens wait about 7 years for a permanent resident status, with longer waits for those from Mexico and Philippines. “Consular officers are now considering petitions of the brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens from the Philippines who filed almost 24 years ago.” (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R42866.pdf)

Opponents of immigration favor:

-         Reduced immigration

-         Elimination of diversity visas (the immigrants do not wish to integrate into our society and comprise criminal elements as evidenced by attempted terrorist attacks)

-         Employment-based visas should include only highly skilled workers with hard to find skills

-         Limitation of family-based legal permanent residence (LPR) to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, not extended family members

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security have an annual maximum of legal permanent residents of 675,000 - 480,000 comprise family immigration, 140,000 employment-based immigration, and 55,000 diversity immigrants. These people follow the law, the complicated and lengthy maze of bureaucracy, legal documents, fees, and other requirements they must fulfill and pay for in order to become eligible, and then must wait patiently inside or outside of the U.S. at least five years for the resolution of their cases.

According to Ruth Ellen Wasem, immediate relatives such as spouses, unmarried minor children of U.S. citizens, parents of adult U.S. citizens and refugees do not have numerical limits on legal immigration.

Meanwhile, 11-12 million (the numbers change constantly, depending on the source) illegal aliens who just crossed the border illegally via Mexico or Canada establish residence here, have children, take advantage of our free schools, social services and programs in this country, including the upcoming Obamacare for which they are not required to pay the minimum $20,000 a year premium for a bronze level insurance but have full medical benefits.

These people are what the liberals lovingly call “undocumented workers,” “citizens in the shadows,” “Americans without papers.” I would argue that they do have papers, the passports and I.D.s from their respective countries whose flags they so devotedly respect and pin on their vehicles while burning, spitting, and trampling on the American flag. And Democrats tell us that they must immediately get amnesty and the right to vote.

We should have a robust guest worker system; it would alleviate many immigration problems we currently have. The Bracero Program, named after the Spanish “strong arm,” which was initiated in August 1942 and ended in 1964, imported temporary contract labor from Mexico into the U.S. However, we should first address the millions of unemployed Americans in the U.S., those who have made a lifestyle choice out of socialized generational welfare, and the Americans who have become discouraged workers and are no longer counted in the unemployment figures.

In the category of legal aliens are immigrants and nonimmigrants. The nonimmigrants comprise tourists, foreign students, diplomats, temporary agricultural workers, exchange visitors, intracompany business personnel who come here for a specific purpose and with a visa. Some of them never go back and are transitioned to legal permanent resident (LPR) status. Yet admission of immigrants (foreign nationals who come to live lawfully and permanently in the U.S.) is much more stringent than nonimmigrants. (CRS, Ruth Ellen Wasem, December 17, 2012)

Ronald Reagan gave blanket amnesty to almost 3 million illegal aliens in 1986 with Congressional promise that immigration reform would be enacted and the border would be enforced. It never happened and President Reagan regretted later his decision because it brought a new wave of illegal immigration. Today we are at the same crossroads and Congress is not even pretending to reform immigration laws or enforce border security. Instead, the federal government is suing those states who are trying to enforce the law.

 

 

 

 

Becoming an American citizen

Few Americans give much thought to standing in endless lines or fighting daunting bureaucracy. That is because they are very seldom faced with such possibilities in every day life.
My move to the U.S. started three years before I ever set foot on the plane to New York - three years of endless audiences to various vice ministers, police, security police, passport office, translators, notaries, attorneys, and other mayoral officials. I had to prove that I had not debts, no criminal record, no communicable diseases, mental illness, associations to undesirable agencies and organization, etc.; each document had to be translated into English, notarized, typed only by state approved functionaries, and approved and re-approved by state, ministers, and security police. By the time I finished the entire process, I was exhausted, had not a dime to my name, and had lost all my rights as a Romanian citizen. I was literally a person without a country, a persona-non-grata, with no rights whatsoever. I had a Romanian passport with a single visa to the U.S., but no home and no ability to earn a living. I had to pay back my schooling although the Constitution stated clearly that education was free to all Romanian citizens at all levels. I was stripped of all rights simply because I petitioned for a visa to come study, work, and live in the world's freest republic. Unfortunately, the communist dictatorship thought that I was a spy and my motives were less than honest. As a matter of fact, everyone who made contact at all with a foreigner without prior authorization, was immediately under suspicion and surveillance by the dreaded Security Police. When my fiance's mother came to visit, we had to answer questions at 2 a.m. downtown at the police headquarters. The interrogation lasted over two hours - the cops wanted to know why we did not notify them ahead of time of the visit? All the while, because they controlled the population's whereabouts through draconian block by block registration, they knew exactly who was coming and going into and out of the country. My parents and I were taken in separate vans and interrogated separately as if we had committed a crime. Jean and her son Bill were bewildered that their visit had caused so much distress and heartache to us. Americans could not understand or fathom total control, but we were used to living under constant surveillance and under a microscope. Our phones were tapped, our letters opened, our visits, moves, and job locations were recorded carefully. Nobody could ever be incognito anywhere on the soil of a totalitarian society. And they were doing this without the benefit of cameras or computers! We had become a nation of spies and traitors - spying and betraying our own families for an extra loaf of bread, a pound of meat, bananas, or oranges. It was very sad, knowing that nobody trusted anybody. The survival instinct taught us to accept and circumvent disturbing laws and rules and to keep quiet. People learned to take secrets to their graves.

Was it easy to become an American citizen? Not really. After my arrival in 1978, I lived for two years as a resident alien. I could not vote, I could not be on welfare (not that I wanted to, I was certainly poor enough to qualify), and had no rights. I did not march in the streets demanding same rights as American citizens because I understood I was not an American. I did not wave the Romanian flag in the face of Americans while shouting angrily that America will some day be ours. I learned English better each day. I had studied two years in high school, but it was not good enough. I wanted to become part of the fabric of this society, to understand it, honor it, respect it, and immerse in its culture. I did not want to lose my heritage, I kept it alive at home, but I wanted to be an American. After two years, I felt competent enough to apply for citizenship. I had to study the Constitution, take a test, pass it with flying colors, and be interrogated for three hours by an immigration officer in Memphis. I knew more about the U.S. history and Constitution than most Americans. I spoke better English than most Americans. I spelled better. I was truly prepared. The paperwork was very expansive, difficult to obtain, expensive to translate, and the taxes to the government were costly. As a poor student, just driving three hours to Memphis several times a year was prohibitive. I had to decide sometimes whether I paid for documents and gas to the Immigration Office, or for food and shelter. It took two years and a few months before I was approved and finally sworn in as a Naturalized Citizen in the Court of Oxford, MS. It was a very proud day for me and four years in coming. I was no longer persona-non-grata, I had gained a country, a language, safe borders, and a culture resplendent with a tapestry of many nations, ethnicities, all united by a common language and goal, freedom. We were truly a melting pot, not a tossed salad bowl. What a sweet day, May 20, 1982!

I don't take my American citizenship lightly and I watch in helpless disbelief the demonstration of utter contempt and hatred for our laws by illegal aliens and their supporters, La Rasa, the democrats, and the administration who are demanding amnesty for breaking the law. The foreign flag-waving and the burning of the American flag in the faces of Americans is shocking. The calls for violence against Americans, racial hatred, pitting one ethnic group against another, go unpunished. The federal government is approving and stoking lawlessness, racial divide, and the destruction of our culture and country. What makes hispanics more deserving of American citizenship just because they jumped a fence illegally? Why should we reward bad behavior? There are thousands of immigrants who are waiting their turns patiently, filling out forms after forms, waiting years sometimes to receive or be denied a visa to freedom. Vast oceans separate them from our borders. Does that make them less deserving of becoming legal residents? I had to prove that I had a sponsor in the U.S. who was willing and able to support me if need be. I also had to have thousands of dollars in a bank account so that I won't become the ward of the state. Yet that is exactly what is happening now with all the hispanics who illegally set foot on our soil - they drop their anchor babies and claim permanent residence and citizenship rights when their anchor babies turn 18. I had to pay for years for the birth of my babies because we had no insurance, yet all illegals benefit from free medical and pre-natal care, food, housing, WIC, compliments of the U.S. taxpayer. Why? Should the Mexican government not have some responsibility for their fleeing citizens? They have more wealth in petroleum than our country does, they certainly can afford to institute social programs to eradicate poverty in Mexico. The Mexican gang violence and drug trade are spilling onto our southern borders and the federal government is doing very little to curtail it. It is up to the states like Arizona to defend their own borders against the massive invasion. As one very savy conservative had said, borders, language, and culture are very important and must be preserved at all costs. Our soldiers would have died in vain if we fail to protect our borders and allow illegal immigration to wreck this beautiful nation. We are successful because we are free and are united by a common goal and our faith in God.