I AM AN IMMIGRANT

OUTLINE:

1.  HOW I CAME TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

2.  MOST AMERICANS ARE DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS.

3.  THE OTHER MEANING OF "IMMIGRANT".

4.  WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT CITIZENS OF OTHER COUNTRIES
            LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT PERMISSION?

5.  WHAT PORTION OF THE POPULATION OF EARTH
            WANTS TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES?

I AM AN IMMIGRANT

by James Leonard Park

1.  HOW I CAME TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

    Late one night at the end of 1949,
I came into the United States of America in a train.
I was only 8 years old at the time.
And I was immigrating with my whole family.

    At the border, we were interviewed by immigration officers,
who probably had first checked our immigration papers
that allowed us the status of landed immigrants.
My father already had a job lined up and a house purchased.
Two moving vans of our household possessions had preceded us.

    Each member of the family was interviewed, photographed, & fingerprinted.
Making prints of each of my fingers particularly sticks in my memory,
since I associated fingerprinting with criminals.
And I knew that we were not criminals.

    More than 60 years later,
I was able to see my childhood picture in my immigration file,
when I was applying for Social Security.
It was black-and-white, of course.
There I was at age 8 sitting alone on a wooden chair.

    For me, America has truly been the land of opportunity.
Almost everything that I have become
has been made possible because I am an American.
People who were born in the USA
do not always realize all of the opportunities we have.

    But if we will think for a few minutes
how different our lives would have been if we had
been born and lived in some other country of the world,
we might appreciate everything that has been given to us
just by the accident of bring born in the United States.

    I suffered no discrimination because of my country of origin.
I always spoke English as my native language.
I did not look any different from the other kids in school.
I was completely accepted by everyone from the very first day.

    I tell this story simply to show that immigration can be orderly.
My parents had visited the United States before we emigrated.
And they had selected a house for us all to live in.
As already mentioned, my father had a job waiting for him.
It was like moving to Minnesota from another state of the USA.

    I had no part in doing the paperwork to immigrate to the USA.
That was all handled by my parents.
And there must not have been much waiting time,
since we moved with little interruption in my father's employment.
As soon as he knew he had to find a new job, he considered the USA
—and quickly arranged for the whole family to move here.

    Immigration takes much longer in the 21st century,
in part because there are so many people who would like to live in America.
But there are orderly processes in place
by which individuals and families from all over the world
can emigrate to the United States of America.
The current processes of immigration need to be improved,
perhaps beginning with the most obvious problems
created by the present laws and regulations of the United States.

    Five years after we arrived, we all became citizens of the USA.
Thus, even tho I was born in another country,
I have been an American citizen since I was 13 years old.
Naturalization was also an easy process as far as I know.

    One other event I remember from my childhood
was taking a card to the local post office once a year,
which was to tell the Immigration and Naturalization Service
just where all of us lived.
We were still at the same address.
But we had to report that fact once per year on a simple card.
I think it was called the alien registration form.
After we were naturalized in 1955
it was no longer necessary for us to report our addresses.

    We have committed no crimes nor ever been in jail.
Each of us has contributed to American society in his own way.

    Most of us received our educations in the USA.
And we are fully integrated into American society.
I have become a philosopher and writer,
which might not have happened if I had stayed in the country of my birth.

    As far as I can remember,
no one has ever guessed that I was not a born-American.
I have lived the life that was open to any other American.
Beyond being allowed into the USA,
no special privileges have ever come to me or my family.
Everything we had was paid for by us.
In short, it cost the USA nothing to admit us.



2.  MOST AMERICANS ARE DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS.

     Except for the "Indians"—the indigenous peoples
who have been in the Americas for thousands of years—
most Americans can tell a similar story of their ancestors
coming from other countries to settle in the USA.
How many generations ago did your ancestors come to America?

    Besides the most recent immigration story told above,
I also have a classic immigration story:
In 1630, my direct ancestor in the male line,
Sir Robert Parke came from London, England
with most of his family, to settle in New England.
In 1630 North America had no immigration controls:
If you set foot on this continent from any ship, you were welcome to stay.
My part of the Park family went to Canada during the Revolutionary War
because they did not believe in the violent overthrow of the government.
About 200 years later, my nuclear family returned to the USA.

    Thus, my ancestry in North American goes back almost 400 years,
11 generations of Parks on this continent.

    Most of the other European-Americans have not been here that long.
And African-Americans can tell of their ancestors being imported by force
during a period of more than a hundred years.
The importing and exporting of slaves was abolished in 1807.
And the slaves in the southern states were all freed in 1865.
Each American family has its own complex story of immigration.

3.  THE OTHER MEANING OF "IMMIGRANT".

    But when you saw the title of this essay—"I am an Immigrant"—
you might have been expecting something entirely different.
Most often when the word "immigrant" appears in the news,
it refers to people who have entered the USA without permission.

    Even tho there are millions of us who have been admitted to the USA
and become naturalized American citizens,
we are not the people who are being discussed in the 'immigration' debate.

    Rather, America's continuing problem is immigration without permission
---especially from the countries south of the United States.
But, of course, there are unauthorized immigrants coming into the USA
every day from many countries of the world.
Some simply step across the border.
But most arrive as visitors by the normal means of transportation:
airplanes, trains, buses, & cars.
And if they had visas granting permission to enter the country,
some of them simply melt into the population when their visas expire.

    Few people would 'solve' the problem of immigration
by simply saying that anyone in the world
who wants to come to the USA has a right to do so.
It is simply not practical to open our borders to all comers.
(Perhaps one billion of the people on the Earth would like to live in the USA.)
In the first hundred years of the USA,
this land did welcome all who came.
But now, early in the 21st century, we must limit the number of immigrants.
How will we revise our patterns of immigration?



4.  WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT CITIZENS OF OTHER COUNTRIES
            LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT PERMISSION?

    According to all estimates, the number of people living in the USA
without any legal right to reside in America numbers in the millions. 
The sheer numbers make it difficult to imagine sending them all 'home'.

    Some of these citizens of other countries were brought here as children.
This was also my situation,
altho I was brought into the USA with the permission of the U.S. government.
Millions of other children were brought into the USA without permission.
Children smuggled across the border should not be treated as criminals.
The unauthorized immigration was committed by their parents.

    And present immigration policy is to repatriate foreign families together.
The children might have been so young when they entered the USA
that they did not know what national borders mean.

    Other children have been born within the borders of the USA
to parents who were citizens of other countries.
These children also are not guilty of any crime.
And under present law, they become U.S. citizens
the moment they are born within our borders.

    And if they are still too young to take care of themselves,
they would normally be repatriated with their parents
if the parents must return to the country where they hold citizenship.
   
    Many very complicated family situations arise
when some members are U.S. citizens,
others have legal permission to live in the USA,
and some others are citizens of other countries here without permission.
Any immigration reform must deal with such complex family situations.
Which family members can remain in the USA?
Which family members must be returned to their countries of origin?
How much cross-border visiting will be permitted,
especially in light of the fact that all would still like to live in the USA?

    Some people who are repatriated
because they were found to be living in America without permission
will be able to apply for legal immigration at some later time.
And the fact that they have already lived for some years in the USA
should be taken into account
when deciding to accept them as authorized immigrants.

5.  WHAT PORTION OF THE POPULATION OF EARTH
            WANTS TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES?

    Probably no polls have been taken,
but I am guessing that hundreds of millions of the people of the Earth
dream of living in the USA.
In our hearts, we might feel inclined to welcome them all.
But in our heads, we know that there is not enough room
for adding one billion people to the U.S. population.

    Because so many people want to live in the USA,
America must limit the number of new people entering each year.
We will probably welcome visitors—who return to their home countries.
But we must limit the numbers of people permitted to emigrate
to the USA to become permanent residents and later citizens.

This account of how I became an American
has become Chapter 1 of Orderly Immigration: Creating a New America:
"I am an Immigrant".

Would you consider joining a free Facebook Seminar
discussing this book-being-revised?
See the complete description of this seminar:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/ED-IMM.html


AUTHOR:

    James Park is an independent philosopher,
living and writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
He was born in Canada,
which accounts for his ease in becoming an American.
Much more will be learned about him on his website.

    Here are a few related on-line essays on immigration reform:

Children of Foreign Nationals:
New Pathways to Citizenship

End Deportation of Persons Likely to Qualify for
a Pathway to Citizenship under Immigration Reform

Registration without Deportation:
Bringing Millions of Foreign Nationals out of the Shadows

Register all Foreign Nationals:
Carrots and Sticks

Earning American Citizenship:
Be Above Average

    These (plus several others) are discussed in a
   Facebook Seminar on immigration reform.


Created July 13,2010; Revised 7-24-2010; 7-27-2010; 7-29-2010; 8-1-2010; 9-10-2010; 11-22-2010;
11-23-2011; 5-12-2012; 1-31-2013; 7-29-2013; 8-2-2013; 8-22-2013; 8-26-2013; 9-5-2014;
3-30-2016; 1-12-2017; 9-10-2017; 5-16-2019; 11-19-2020; 

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