Who am I, as a Native American, to comment on the immigration policies of this nation? We were way too trusting these many years ago and we let our borders and shorelines be crossed without proper papers. Everybody in those first decades qualifies as a WOP, that is a person without papers. We were good to those people too. Kept them from starving. Showed them how to plant some things and if you will believe their history, we even invited them to a big dinner. Only I think they claim to be the inviter. Well, what I am going to do now is talk about current immigration problems.
What about borders? Well, if you have them there is only two things you can do: keep them open or keep them securely closed. My advice is to keep it orderly. I guess that means that there can only be designated crossing points. Border security has a number of responsibilities, among which are making sure that some of these potentially illegal persons don't die in the desert or in the back of a truck with no air.
So how do you keep people from crossing any place they choose? Well we do have National Guard troops in every state and I believe we need to use them until everyone understands our policy. If there are not enough troops in a border state, then ship them in from someplace else. They are the National Guard after all.
What about people who are already here? I have heard it said the 11 million people can't be shipped back or deported. But one person can be deported for cause.
Try this:
1. He or she is coming across our borders now; turn them around and send them back.
2. He or she gets arrested for some offense,;deport him or her.
3. He or she files for welfare.
4. He or she applies for a license.
5. Is working illegally for a farm or factory.
6. Applies for health care, i.e. emergency room; give care and then notify authorities.
Why do we award citizenship to a child born of a non-citizen? The child should retain the status of the parent. Do our soldiers serving in foreign lands allow their children to be given citizenship to the country their children are born in? Is citizenship offered by any other country?
Okay, let's get positive.. Immigrant has a job. He or she should register, pay taxes, employer should also register. The employer should ensure that his employees are legally in this country. He should help with green card status. He should facilitate tax payments.
If the worker is a temporary worker, he should register as such and the employer or employers should identify the employee. Employee would have job site listed when returning to this country, for temporary employment.
Employee should file for citizenship and get in line with others who have already filed without prompting
Current immigrants (illegal) should do everything possible to change their status to pending legality. Self identification would be helpful.
We as a nation should not be pursuing the Hispanic population for votes. There are legitimiate activities that have been used for a long time and we should be following the guidelines that apply to immigration of all peoples. We should be fair and we need to expect fair treatment from the immigrants.
The demonstrations of the past weeks seemed to be saying that we should overlook the behavior of potential citizens because they contribute so much to our economy. That is not a good trade-off. The new citizen should not start off by breaking our laws. Then maybe our Indian brothers from Mexico should be given status as the Jay Treaty does for Canadian borders. I hope all this can be worked out by Columbus Day.
Bill LeBlanc is an elder of the Bay Mills Indian Community. He is retired from State government where he worked as an Indian advocate. He currently resides on the Bay Mills Reservation.
