What A Sucker! I Came Here Legally

Thank goodness Zacarias Moussaoui came along to capture the headlines. The lollipop coverage by the mainstream media given to illegal aliens got to be a bit too sugary, especially on the day of that big march. Wall to wall, from airwaves to newsprint, the message was this: Oh come let us adore them.

Talking heads made it clear that if you believe in preserving our sovereignty, you are a bigot.

So what about the millions (including Mexicans!) waiting properly in line to get here by following the rules? Suckers, like me.

Though I haven't tried, because it's useless, no "respectable" newspaper would publish this side of the story, my side, which respresents millions.

Thankfully, God invented the Internet. Whoops, I mean Al Gore, of course.

But please, don’t make me go into all this. The Holocaust is involved in this telling, so I’ll spare you, and myself, all that. But this much is important so you’ll understand why I’m the wrong person to ask about illegal aliens and why they belong here and why they have a right to demand their RIGHTS.

(Remember the Holocaust? That is the event that New York Times Editor Bill Keller admitted the Times “overlooked.”)

Just this paragraph will do: We were in France when Hitler invaded, somehow (through the heroism of my father) got on a famous ship named the Serpa Pinto, which took us to Montreal. Our destination was America, but America would not let us in. So it had to be Canada.

Heck, Montreal is a great town, Bright Lights, Big City. I was there for hockey’s great years, Maurice Richard and all the rest, and I grew up just fine, I think. But the dream was always, and I mean always, and I mean every minute – The United States of America. That was everyone’s dream. (No offense to Canada, really. In fact, I saw Jackie Robinson play even before Americans did.)

While I attended Fairmount School, my parents worked hard, really hard, and even harder trying to get us into the United States. I do not know the details. I was too young. I do know that it was all about waiting in lines, knocking on doors from this consulate to another consulate, spending money on lawyers who were supposedly immigration/emigration specialists, and then getting this paper and that paper, and always it’s the wrong paper.

We got something that allowed us into the U.S.A on a temporary visa, so we stayed with relatives in Cincinnati. Paula and Harry had survived Auschwitz, in fact they met there at that death camp, and managed to get to Cincinnati. Paula was a doctor, got her degree in Poland and then had to attend university in Cincinnati all over again.

Then our temporary visa expired, and believe this, we made sure not to overstay even by a minute. Every few years we’d get that temporary visa, which sent us back and forth, as meanwhile my folks tried this, that and everything to get that PERMANENT visa, which leads to citizenship. As I said, don’t ask me for details, I was just a kid, but finally that permanent visa arrived, and after five years living here in the United States (this takes me back to the early 1960s) we finally got those citizenship papers, which I still regard as near holy.

But all in all, the entire effort – at a cost of so much frustration and pain – took about 12 years. I said TWELVE years! All that to make it legal. Not for a moment did we think of coming here or staying here without the proper documentation. That goes for us and for the thousands and even the millions who literally shared the same boat.

(Talk about feedback, or life imitating art! In the novel I’ve got running on Amazon.com, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, my hero in there, macho newspaper editor Jay Garfield, runs a story titled PRESS 1 FOR DEPORTATION. He sure hears about it from his liberal staff, and from 10,000 demonstrators outside the building. That’s in the novel. In real life, I’m hearing it, too, from readers, thankfully in support, most of them, but the dissenters don’t bother to discuss. They go straight for the label.)

How do I feel about people who simply walk across our border and DEMAND their RIGHTS to remain?

Please, I am the wrong person to ask.