My Immigration Story
I suffered because I have been all legal. Our country qualified us for applying for permanent resident status because of our education, qualification and acquired jobs. America needed people like us. I have been proud of my great contribution to the education process in this country for 40 years. For 41 years, My wife, an RN-midwife in the USA, helps delivering (legal) American babies into this country and I, for over 40 years, help educating them and often salvaging them from the ills of the failed education system of our country, the media which brain washed them into heart-throbbing mindless individuals, the ills of brainless merchants, who are only interested in making money from little kids and the immature, who created the cravings in them for things they do not need and from poor high school education. Because of the great opportunities and freedom that I can enjoy in this country, I am grateful for being an American. I can’t say the same about China.
Having been born and raised in Hong Kong, against which the US had an unfairly limited quota, and in the sixties, when I, after being qualified for legal immigration, applied for a green card, like many from Hong Kong in those days, I had to wait for 14 years, (some waited for longer) to be issued my green card. Many people likewise qualified, who were born in Hong Kong were not given the opportunity to apply for a green card after me. I believe I was one of the last ones from Hong Kong that could apply. (Many returned to Hong Kong and became very successful later, much better than me.)
It is hard being marooned here, not able to visit even Canada or Mexico (not that I care to visit Mexico) and not being able to say yes, or to say no with an honorable and understandable reason to invitations from abroad for leadership, concert and speaker roles which would have developed my career faster and earlier. After I got my green card, I had to wait for another 5 years to get my US Passport.
That is the treatment we got because we had to be legal and ethical. I even (not that I could afford it) could spend bribery money to expedite the process through not so Christian ways. We were offered, by my immigration lawyer, the opportunity, to move my application closer to the top to expedite the process at the time, in a hush, hush manner. I was also offered, since I have been called to the pastoral ministry already, to be ordained by a church which presented me with the call to serve the Lord there. That would almost immediately make me a citizen. I couldn’t do that either, because that would blemish my Christian conscience and contaminate my message as a servant-preacher. I was told that if I join the military and go to Vietnam, I would become a citizen immediately. (a dead one!) I am a man of principle, a man of integrity. I have seen many boat-jumpers ran away or being hidden by the church, when an INS officer appear at the church front door!! I didn’t choose to do so. God could forgive me for using the church as a sanctuary, but I have to face my ministry call!!! (That is a long story that have yet to be told.) In the mean time I suffered, not only from the confusion, intimidation, feeling of fear and the misunderstanding, unreasonable questioning and inquiries from prospective employers and contractors into my “legality” who only knew about the green card as a proof of citizenship or residence status. (At the time, they would be prosecuted if they hire any illegal aliens.) It was unfortunate that we had to suffer hardship in getting employment and the shame and humiliation of having to go through that as legal immigrants. We worked extra hard to succeed in getting our degrees as foreign immigrants and to be hired in important professions in this country. It is as if we needed to proof to everyone that we were worthy to be an American.
For many ways we were the generation that has become the bridge and the marginalized, the victims of much more severe racial prejudice, in order to usher our children into this great nation, so that they won’t have to grow up in China or Hong Kong. In those days, we were ashamed that we were not white. Nowadays, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is cool to be anything other than white. Accents in those days means that we were stupid. (I graduated from La Salle college and spoke Hong Kong King’s English in those days, but being not white, everybody thought that I had a bad Chinese accent. However, nowadays, accents are beautiful!!!) In other words, we were punished because we did the right thing and we were righteous people. (No good deed left unpunished!! That is the new motto.) I do not want to complain about this but we all had to work extra hard, try extra harder, suffer more, with pleasure, to succeed here to fulfill our dreams. If the USA is a bad nation, why are there overwhelming numbers of people in every other nation in the globe want to emigrate here??? There are a lot of Americans here who hated and cursed out this nation. They should be cast out and send to any other third world country that they love so much. That would make them treasure their American experience. Willingly we are sandwiched between our extreme (sometimes sickeningly, but not too unusual in Hong Kong in those days) disciplinarian parents/teachers and our difficult ABC children. (Please try to tell me that it is easy, as a bilingual and bicultural parent, to raise American born children here??!!)
Handing out US resident/citizenship papers to illegal aliens is wrong and unethical. Not a single nation on this earth is doing it. It is a very unhealthy way to handle the problem. It will always back fire on all of us. You plant dishonesty, you will surely reap dishonesty. I support limited legal immigration, but everyone who enters must be qualified as a contributing member of this society and they all have to do it legally, stand in line like we did, and prove that they can contribute to our country, which was what I had to do, which is only fair. We are not a welfare state and would never be. WE should only help those who help themselves. Otherwise we will fall as US of America real fast. If we do not do it now, America is surely done for. Don’t let Obama and the extremely liberal left take over this country please!!! We don’t want to be France, or China either. I can smell communism miles away. It is coming!!!
I worked too hard to become who I am now. Please don’t take it from me. I will defend my principles and my hard earned possessions. As an American, I will defend America and fight to preserve the America our forefathers died for.
1. Control the border
2. Impose heavy fines from those who hire illegal workers.
3. Encourage employers to hire more people by giving them incentives.
4. Nobody gets any free rides. Work for your keep. Do anything to support yourselves. As a well educated professional, I cleaned bath rooms, waited on tables and parked cars.
5. If you do crimes, we will take your citizenship away and chase you out the our country which is ruled by laws not by man, though this government now is trying to make us a nanny state and draws money like blood out from us middle class tax payers.
6. Being a citizen is a privilege, not a right.