The Partial Observer by John A. Rudy
Do We Qualify To Stay in the U.S.?
My wife and I are in our 80s, and were born in the United States. We are in the midst of a brief sojourn in Spain, scheduled to return to our birth country before Christmas. While here, we have tried to divorce ourselves from the daily onslaught of news reports of the antics of the so-called political and governmental classes at home. Unfortunately, we have not been entirely successful. Some disturbing accounts have managed to seep through.
In our present situation, those that are most troubling deal with the rounding-up, incarceration, and deportation of people with whom we share comparable family histories and experiences. As we contemplate our return to the U.S. in a few days’ time, we wonder what might await us when we present our valid U.S. passports to the Immigration and Customs official at our point of entry. Will an ICE agent be there to challenge or prevent our admission?
Each of us has one parent who was born elsewhere: my mother in Italy; my wife’s father in Canada—as a French-Canadian to boot! Although both became naturalized citizens before they married and had us in the U.S., according to news reports that profile has not saved others who have been recently deported.
Neither, it would seem, is my having enlisted in the United States Army, served in Vietnam and released with an honorable discharge. Fellow veterans with similarly clean service records have reportedly been seized and deported.
Although my wife lacks a military service credential, for many of her 87 years, she was an award-winning teacher in private and public schools in New York, New Jersey and Texas, along with raising our now three adult children. Similar backgrounds seemingly haven’t saved some from the clutches of the ICE men.
It gets more problematic in this environment when we consider other aspects of our family origins. All of our grandparents were immigrants—in my case, from Italy and Poland; in my wife’s, from Ireland and Canada. As far as we know, no one on either side was a white South African.
If we are lucky enough to slip through ICE’s net when we attempt to re-enter our country, one of the first things we will do is take steps to beef-up our known family history by engaging an ancestry search firm to find what may improve our lineage. Perhaps one of my wife’s Irish forebears found his way to Plymouth, England in 1620 and signed on as a member of the crew of the Mayflower. Perhaps one of my father’s Polish ancestors accompanied General Casimir Pulaski to Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78 to form the first American cavalry for George Washington’s army. One would hope that such enhancements to our pedigrees would be noted by ICE in favor of our being allowed to stay.
Similarly situated Americans like us, who do not have the means or desire to be a multi-million dollar contributor to any of the current administration’s various enterprises, would also be well advised to take whatever actions they deem prudent in case the ICE man cometh for them.
Most people don’t buy fire insurance because they want their house to go up in flames; they do so in case it does. Until ICE melts, we all need to insulate ourselves and our families from a potential ICE storm.
John A. Rudy and his wife, Suzanne, reside in Cooperstown.
