I didn't much like the immigration bill that just stalled in the U.S.
Senate. In fact, I disliked it. Intensely. And I was for it. You can imagine how the folks who were against it felt about the
bill.
You may not have been crazy about it, either, if for reasons different and
even opposite from mine. It was the kind of bill that's advertised as a
Grand Bargain, by which is meant another shoddy compromise that has
something to offend everybody. My own list of objections was starting to get
as long and involved as the bill itself. To name just a couple of the big
ones:
-The bill was mercenary, not family-friendly. It replaced family connections
as a basis for gaining entrance to the United States with a point system
weighted heavily in favor of those who came bringing skills that the economy
needs. Or rather that the government says the economy needs. Those needs
wouldn't be determined by private companies or individual employers but
mainly by statisticians in Washington.
Socio-economic class would trump family values. That's no way to build a
country, or at least it's not the way this one was built. And I kind of like
the way this one turned out.
-The bill would have instituted a point system that Rube Goldberg could have
devised, giving different weights to different qualifications. There would
be points for English proficiency, experience living here, a solid job offer
from an American employer, and higher levels of education - especially in
math, science and technology. Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free? Who needs 'em? They'd be elbowed aside by software
engineers, credentialed professionals and assorted technicians.
We're all products of our own experience, and the first thing I thought when
reading an outline of this voluminous monstrosity was: Ma would never have
made the cut.
Yes, my mother was young and strong. But she had no formal schooling, none
at all. She was, as we liked to say in the family, illiterate in five
languages. That's what growing up on a battlefield of the First World War,
Eastern Front, will give you: a true European education. Her major was
suffering.
What she wanted most in life, desperately wanted, and would have overcome
all obstacles to achieve, and just about did, was to be Š an American. She
wanted work, safety, respect, a home, a family, a chance. She knew who she
was, and hated where she was - Europe, a word she pronounced to her dying
day with a bitterness you could hear and feel and taste at 10 paces.