You’d Think It Were Another Somalia

The AP:

An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported from the United States to Mexico, where she vowed Monday to continue her campaign to change U.S. immigration laws.

Leave it to the AP utterly to miss the point.

Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her sanctuary…

…Jim Hayes, director of ICE in Los Angeles, said “proper perspective” should be placed on the woman’s case. Using a false identity, as in the case of Arellano, who was convicted of using someone else’s Social Security number, can be a threat to national security, he said…

…Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the case demonstrates the need for a reform of U.S. immigration laws.

“Until we resolve the status of the estimated 12 million undocumented people living and working in the United States by giving them some meaningful pathway to citizenship, families will continue to be torn apart,” Villaraigosa said…

This tale is almost precisely what one is talking about when saying that there is an assumption among way too many that one has a right to live in the U.S. just because one wants to.  (When did Americans get a similar right to live in Mexico, or have we all missed something?)  That (deliberate?) misperception is disgracefully encouraged by the likes of the current Mayor of Los Angeles, who stupidly has his “pathway” distinctly backwards.

Since when did residency rights suddenly “up-volve” from citizen minor to foreign parents?  Since never.  The world out here is chocker full of U.S. citizen minor children whose parents are foreigners, and those foreign parents are not entitled to U.S. residency merely because their child is. 

However, it is a bit tougher, obviously, for those parents to walk into the U.S. from Europe, Asia or Africa than it is from Mexico.  Hence Ms Arellano was merely trying to use her country of origin’s geographic proximity and her U.S. born child as leverage to obtain the U.S. residency to which she is simply not legally entitled.  She made her best effort, and failed.

And in not taking her son back to Mexico with her, she merely demonstrates that leading a “crusade” to gain 100 million Mexicans an automatic legal right to live in the U.S. is clearly more important to her than living with her child.  That is her own personal choice also, certainly.  In contrast, if I found myself so separated from my wife, my choice would be never to return to the U.S.

Interestingly, though, Ms Arellano’s child, by virtue of her actual nation-state citizenship, is therefore a duel Mexican-U.S national.  When he becomes an adult a scant decade from now, if he wishes to move to the U.S. he will be able to obtain a U.S. passport.  Then, as an adult permanently residing in the U.S., he will be permitted to sponsor his non-citizen mother’s bid for U.S. residency.  Just like how it is done by many another U.S. citizen adult child who sponsors a visa for a foreign parent.  But considering Ms Arellano’s conviction for the fraudulent use of a social security number, that bid may prove problematic.  (An arrest in London for kicking a photographer – and seemingly not coming clean about that with U.S. immigration — was enough to get a childish, but legally adult, British singer’s work visa at least temporarily withdrawn.)

There is actually nothing particularly novel about this situation.  It is newsworthy only because media has chosen to make it so.  Contrived drama sells.

But more importantly, it is worth noticing how we are also regularly seeing much media, as well as illegal alien advocacy groups, attempting to portray Mexico as somewhere which simply must be escaped from no matter how high the cost, another impoverished and hopeless hell hole akin to a Somalia, a Sudan or a Zimbabwe – despite any such assertions being absolute nonsense.  Amusingly, though, we often hear also of how the “hopeless hell hole’s” culture is deemed worth favorably comparing to that of the U.S. and Canada.  Huh.  Interesting dichotomy that: an often culturally superior, impoverished and hopeless hell hole.

It would also seem that Democrats, especially, have to be very cautious with this sort of residency issue.  Particularly, they should not allow themselves to get too carried away with “the families being torn apart” swoonings.  After all, were we not told some years ago that a child’s place is with a loving parent . . . no matter what?