July 2010

Maybe I’ve read too many John Le Carre’s novels, but what struck me about the recent spy saga was not the existence of sleeper agents but the human aspects of the outcome. Here are 10 people who’ve lived in the U.S. for a number of years, who had established lives, and who are now going to different Russia than the one they had left, to a set of experiences with a modicum of unknown. Most of all their children who are actually U.S. citizens will in almost all cases be going to a foreign country. Maybe they speak the language, maybe they don’t. Regardless, their lives are completely upturned and undergoing the private equivalent of a revolution.
Earlier in the day I’d read an article chronicling the personal narratives of several illegal immigrants. Most had arrived in the U.S. illegally with their parents as children and were now also in predicaments not of their own making.
Maybe we can’t change much about the unexpected difficulties or hardships of all these young people, but we can give them our compassion, we can stretch our understanding to include those who are innocently caught in the consequences of the actions of others.

We’re convinced that solving the stem of illegal immigrants is with walls, troops, deportation and as is the case in Arizona, arrest. New Jersey is trying another approach. The city of Trenton is issuing ID cards to undocumented immigrants. The photo ID cards come from a coalition of community groups who include churches, civic associations, the Fire Department and public schools. Although they are not government issued, they have the endorsement of the Trenton police and the Mercer County sheriff and prosecutor’s office and have been accepted by many check cashing companies, libraries, stores, medical clinics, public parks and pools. It is felt that the cards are important in fighting crime, treating those injured, and making the community function more smoothly as a community.
This approach may not be best for every state or every city in the nation, but it does show that there are viable alternatives to treating undocumented immigrants like criminals.