I came into the United States in April 1968, green card in hand. We came from the northern border after months of following the legal steps mandated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Fourteen years later, we chose to become United States citizens. That process took longer than getting our green cards, but we followed the rules.
As law-abiding Canadians, it never occurred to us to slip across the border posing as Northern tourists seeking warmer weather. I’ve often commented to friends who were born in this country that if the average person on the street who is a proud American had to jump through some of the INS hoops, they might not get that precious piece of paper which declares that you are a citizen of The United States of America.
One of the first steps we had to take was getting fingerprinted at our local police station. Those prints were then thoroughly checked by several police agencies, including the beloved Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
We cleared that hurdle. Next there was lots of paperwork which we carefully completed, knowing that a wrong answer could delay or deny our being able to move to West Virginia, where my husband’s international company thought he should go.
Our house, our very first house which we had owned less than a year, was put on the market. A deal was made and a closing date set. Movers were contacted. As the day drew closer, we weren’t confident that our green cards would arrive in time.
We were told we had to go to Montreal for a final, final interview, and a medical exam. We were to bring chest x-rays with us to prove we did not have TB.
The Montreal part of the process annoyed me the most. We were treated like cattle, and visions of immigrants going through Ellis Island kept flashing before me. The medical exam was perfunctory but profitable for the doctor. We had to repeat verbally things we had written on our applications. (Oh, I know they were just double-checking, but in my late 20s I wasn’t sure why any of this “stuff” had to be done.)
For years we had been welcomed as tourists, spending money up and down the Atlantic Seaboard. But, aha! Now we were going to actually live here. We were going to be part of the system. We got Social Security cards, tax forms, a new bank account, and a Sears credit card. We were also paying taxes contributing to the economy more generously than we had as occasional visitors.
It was close, but the green cards arrived in time for us to leave as planned.
Having crossed at the Thousand Islands/Ivy Lea border point many times, I didn’t feel any real turmoil about leaving my native land and starting a new and different life. As it happened, we were making that very same crossing around noon on Sept. 11, 2001, having just learned about the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Word had gotten out that the border crossings were to be closed but they were open. Not many people were crossing into New York that day. Many were heading into Canada, particularly truck drivers caught in limbo. As we pulled away from the second span of the Thousand Island bridge and saw the sign “Welcome to New York,” my eyes filled with tears and I knew then that I was an American and thugs had attacked us.
Different Theories
As beautiful and wonderful as West Virginia can be, I don’t think that should be the first impression of “life in America” for two people who’d grown up in a lovely, cosmopolitan capital city.
Naively, I didn’t think there’d be much of an adjustment. Canadians and Americans pretty well spoke the same language and shared a lot of popular culture, so what could be so bad?
But until we became citizens 14 years later, we were “resident aliens” who had to report our whereabouts annually to local authorities.
Canadians are different from Americans. We don’t have a simple explanation of what it is to be Canadian, but many Canadians will answer they’re not Americans when asked to define themselves.
Our differences lie, as do most things, in our histories. We broke away from England rather peacefully in 1867 after serious discussions about how to conduct ourselves as a new confederation. The American separation from Mother England was hardly peaceful.
The United States is known worldwide as “the great melting pot,” where people from different nations come together and assimilate into a large American family.
At least that’s the theory.
Canada uses “the vertical mosaic” model, which allows for various ethnic, social, religious groups to clump together, retain many of their customs, and live happily ever after as part of Canada. Another theory.
No Easy Solution
There is no perfect way to bring in new citizens and make them part of the fabric of a country.
The situation we now find ourselves in concerning laws for illegal immigrants, proposals for alleviating the situation, and trying to reconcile all sides of the question proves that the melting pot doesn’t appear to work anymore.
It’s difficult to point fingers and correct a decades-old problem.
The first person to hire an illegal immigrant and look the other way so he wouldn’t have to pay a fair wage is the real culprit.
Now we say we need immigrant workers to do labor that Americans won’t do.
If we need them, then let them come here legally. For those already here as productive members of American society, we need to find a solution that is fair. Rewarding law-breaking does not seem to me to be fair.
Those who help bring illegal immigrants here should be severely penalized. Those who hire them without documentation also should be penalized.
Hope for Millions
Since Congress took the easy out and left Washington for a couple of weeks, I have little hope that anything substantive will come from any compromise bill quilted together in an election year and hovered over by those whose interests do not include words like “legal” and “fair.”
I am a proud, legal immigrant who became a citizen and flies the American flag daily and only occasionally raises the Canadian one beneath it to welcome Canadian visitors or celebrate a Canadian holiday.
My wish would be that those millions of immigrants floating between deportation and legality will one day be able to proudly proclaim themselves as legal residents, soon-to-be citizens.
Mrs. Robson lives in Whispering Pines. She was an adjunct professor in Canadian studies at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.
