A Former "Parasite" Speaks Out

by Dave Bennion

Published October 09, 2008 @ 09:33PM PT

Via Kyle at Citizen Orange comes the story of a once-undocumented immigrant who remembers what it was like living in the shadows before the Reagan amnesty:

When the pundits began to tear into undocumented immigrants last summer, using terms like "parasites" and "criminals," my first reaction was to bury my head and turn off the TV. I had worked too hard since my own illegal Mexican border crossing 30 years ago, at the age of 8, to blow my cover now.

. . .

The coyotes hid my mother and me for weeks in a shack in Tijuana with an outhouse so pungent I held my need to use it until I was bursting. At 8 years old, I only vaguely understood the danger of being in a no man's land, completely dependent on the smugglers, with nothing but my mother's mostly empty purse and the clothes we were wearing.

Being light-skinned like gringas would work in our favor, the coyotes told us. They drove us to the Mexican side of the border, and left us at a beach. Another from their operation picked us up there and drove us across as his family.

. . .

The year before I graduated from high school, Congress passed the amnesty law of 1987. A few months after my 18th birthday, I became legal and what had always seemed a blank future of no hope suddenly turned dazzling with possibility.

When I went for my interview at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the caseworker looked at me quizzically when he heard me talk in unaccented English and joke about current events. Surely this American teenager did not fit in with the crowd of illegals looking to make things right.

Actually, officers in administrative interviews (at least in spousal adjustment cases) in my experience sometimes treat lighter-skinned, American-accented applicants more favorably.  If one of the spouses is white, expect an approval.  If both spouses are black, prepare for a denial.  It's only anecdotal, but I found it to be a good rule of thumb at the Garden City, NY, office.  (Former Officer Baichu's office, if you'll recall.)