I'm an immigrant. I am a refugee. The immigration bill died, or so I thought, just a few days after my mother died. I was relieved that I did not have to write this post. Because I wanted the bill to die with my whole heart.
My mother and father were survivors of the Holocuast.
The personal history tells you why I care about this bill and why it's taken so long to do.
When Mameh kept getting worse all this last year, when the doctors thought she wasn't going to last much longer, they were told that this frail women had escaped from to Vilna ghetto and walked to her home shtetl to hide in a Polish farmer's fireplace for 2 years. The only house left standing when the war in Poland was over was my father's house, but even then the house was attacked by Polish partisans who killed those members of my family that hadn't died in the Ghetto or Treblinka. My parents decided that Europe was just a killing field for Jews and so they walked from Vilna to the Italian-Czech border to try to get to the boats taking Jews to Israel. Patton stopped them, put them behind barb wire and when the war was over in the West shipped them off to Displaced Persons camps that were initially set up by the International Rescue Committee (the folks who run camps now in Darfur) I was born there.
Both my parents had family in America ---cousins, aunts, uncles --- of course no parents or spouses because they died in what my parents called, not the Holocaust, but the Greise Mehumeh ( Great War) Family sponsored them, got them an apt over a grocery store and got my fahter a job in a garment plant and my mom worked the night shift at the Girl Scout cookie factory. Despite being refugees from the greatest horror in recorded history, it took 4 years for my parents to be allowed to emigrate to the Goldeneh Land----America.
4 years!!!!
Under this Immigration bill, almost none of the survivors of The Holocaust or indeed any future holocaust, would have ever been permitted into this country. This so far has been very personal, but my reasons for thinking this is a bad bill, while motivated by the passion of my personal history, also gives me insight into why this bill is so counter to all the fundamental things that has allowed America to benefit from her immigrants and made it the golden land for immigrants. America, unlike much of Europe has always done immigration well.
There are 3 major flaws in this bill and I don't know why we as progressives think that these flaws do anything but harm progressive values and, I contend, will eventually redound to Democrat's detriment.
1. Family Reunification is the fundamental basis for the historical success of immigration. It helps immigrants personally and it make immigrant communities successful.
Another personal note. My parent's bought a farm in a New England town with a great school system. I was the first in the family to go to college. FAMILY HELPED US WITH MONEY, LABOR, ADVICE AND SUPPORT. Without the family my parents would not have been successful. It is the same for all present day immigrant communites.
SUBSTITUTING THE POINT SYSTEM, WHICH IS MEANT TO FAVOR THE EMPLOYERS, NOT THE WORKFORCE, IMMIGRANT OR OTHERWISE, DESTROYS THAT FOUNDATION FOR CLIMBING THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC LADDER.
A political point for Democrats. As this process drags on for those immigrants, their communities, and their family members who are already citizens, will become disheartened, angry and feel gipped. I think that some of this will seep into anger toward the political party that was supposed to be on their side . I don't think this bill is good for the Democratic party.
3. There should be no track which does not lead to citizenship. The inability to become a citizen is corrosive of the democratic polity. It will turn these those guest workers into people who have no stake in this country....and all its attendent ills. Just l;ook at the non integration in Europe, esp Germany, and the social political ills that have arisien because immigrants were not allowed to become citizens.
Trapper John at Daily Kos on The Progressive Case Against the Immigration Bill
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Let me enlarge on the political point I made above. Democrats have benefitted enormously from immigration as these groups have become citizens, esp Hispanics. This bill dries up those future adherents, especially since family reunification will become nigh impossible. The anger will grow as it becomes evident that the citizenship track is so difficult and that the new bill favors the educated and the rich; the boost we as a party expect from immigration could easily not happen.
There's more but enough for now.
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