An Open Letter to America
We live at a time of highly-polarized politics when solutions to every problem are categorized into two predetermined categories: liberal and conservative. Such a system has prevented people from becoming psychologically prepared for the idea that a third solution that combines the first two may be as legitimate or even the best way of addressing a problem. In no other case is that example truer than in the case of immigration. So as a human rights defender who has a background in economics and public policy and also is a Persian immigrant, I want to briefly share my immigration story with you and what we can learn from it.
I was born in Tehran in 1982. I have a brother who is five years older. Ever since before my birth, my father dreamt of taking his family to the United States where they could live in a free country, have a good life and allow their children to take advantage of the opportunities that this country had to offer. But as much as he wanted to immigrate to the U.S., he was committed to do so legally. He took his family to Turkey to the American embassy to apply for visas in the late 1980s, but he was denied. We visited Turkey again for the same purpose a few years later and were denied again. We visited Cyprus to attempt to get visas and were denied for the third time. My father also applied for the annual green card lottery for about 10 years. He finally caught a break in 1996 when he won the lottery and got an interview for the whole family.
But that break lasted for a short time as my brother was at a critical age between high school and college at the time and could not legally exit Iran to have his interview in Turkey. The U.S. immigration authorities would not give him an extension longer than a couple of weeks. The three of us received our green cards but could not move to America because we didn't want to leave my brother behind. So my mother reapplied for green card for my brother and she, my father and I went back to Iran to wait with my brother for his green card. But time ran out for me, and in 1999, I had the option of moving to the United States at age 16 by myself or stay in Iran and be drafted to serve in the army. I took the first option and moved to Chicago alone. My parents traveled back and forth because they could no longer be with both their sons at the same time. My brother's green card came through just last year after 10 years of waiting, and he moved to the United States two weeks ago, at age 29 and after having waited a third of his life for a better life. But now, he has to wait even longer because he is married but cannot legally obtain a green card for his wife in a speedy way. I haven't seen my mother since 2005, my father is now 70 years old and it breaks my heart every time I think about the fact that our two families remain broken up to this day.
There are two lessons that my story offers, one of which is directed toward those who want to immigrate to the United States or have already done so; throughout this disheartening two decades of waiting and hardship and even while Iran was in a deadly war with Iraq, my parents didn't consider for one moment entering America illegally through Mexico. It's because they understood that what made America great was, in part, its laws. Without laws, racism and segregation would have continued, murder rate would have been out of control, monopolies would have left the economy paralyzed and inefficient and private possessions could have been confiscated by the government without legal justification. If those things happened, then the United States would no longer be the country that it is and we would not have wanted to immigrate here. A look at how much worse even a relatively small departure from the country's laws by the Bush administration has left us demonstrates this fact. We cannot justify picking and choosing which laws to break and which ones to follow by citing the goodness of our intentions. If we want to be respected in America as citizens, we must show our respect for it first by following its laws. If you are an illegal immigrant, you have broken the laws of this country. What makes this country great is that it holds accountable those who break its laws. There must be a difference between someone who stands in line for decades to enter this country legally and someone who chooses to break the law instead. If you broke the law and have worked without paying your taxes or taking the full responsibilities of a citizen, you have to pay the consequences that this country's democratic representatives determine.
And the second lesson is for those who think the best way to deal with illegal immigration is to reverse it and send illegal immigrants back. Immigrants come to the United States not just because of a job, but because this country promises equality, respect for democratic principles, compassion, opportunity and generosity. It is that promise that attracts people from all over the world. Illegal immigrants have broken the laws of this country; but many of them have been here for years now and have children who were born in the U.S., gone to college and even served in this country's military. Furthermore, as my story demonstrates, legal immigration to the United States is one of the most difficult things that anyone may ever have to deal with. The process is extremely complicated and time-consuming and the odds of getting accepted can be very unlikely and sometimes nearly impossible. But to break up families now by deporting some back breaks that promise of compassion and understanding that the idea of America promises. While this country must seriously work on making illegal immigration more difficult through enforcement and oblige those who have broken the immigration laws of this country to pay the penalty and go to the back of the line to become legal citizens, it must also make legal immigration easier for people who are ready to come here with their unique talents, diversity and love for this country.
People who move to the United States have a dream. It's the American dream. They are all Americans; they just weren't born here. The greatest thing about the American dream is that sharing it doesn't leave us with less of it.
Follow Sam Sedaei on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SamSedaei
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Your column was very enlightening, of what legal immigrant's families face. I thought it was very brave for a sixteen yo. to immigrate by himself.
The non existant gays/lesbians in Iran, I'd recommend to say to hell with legal immigration, catch a flight to Canada or Mexico and get in any way you can. Hanging teen gay boys is BARBARIC, (for what once was the ruling civilization of the ancient world...Persians sure have fallen into the abyss.)
Oh GOSH!
We would act like immigrants do not contribute.
Excuse me! The vitality and youthful labors and taxes gathered and enjoyed by our economy, is directly the product of millions of immigrants.
The demands on service; is a FALSE argument, as MOST undocumented immigrants PAY TAXES. Their LABOR is also TAXED in the form of profits to the companies they work for.
Dear Sam, WELCOME.
I am very sorry to hear the YEARS of struggle it has taken you to find your way to our shores.
Your story points out the glaringly difficult and dysfunctional System of LEGAL Immigration we now employ.
A similar story was of my friend who waited 13 years.
The US Immigration way.
A Dentist in Mexico City for those 13 years, with his own practice.
Entering the United States his education was rejected as insufficient and not recognized. He returned to school and received a college degree then Dental school and at 46 he was finally made a United States Citizen.
Here is the odd part.
Green carded during this time; he worked as a janitor and field hand at farms in the central valley in California saving his money.
The later part, 5 years or so, he Incorporated and opened 4 Dental clinics and hired himself as the janitor in his own company while he went to school.
It seems, as a businessman, he could OWN the clinics and manage them, hiring other Dentists to do the work. He just couldn’t work as a Dentist himself. So he attended school buy day and at night he cleaned the floors and rooms and ran the businesses and paid himself a salary, he even hired his wife to do the books.
It took him nearly 26 years but he made it.
Just a thought.
Sam, start a business and sponsor your folks in.
Corporations can do ANYTHING they want in America.
Become a cooperation.
All the best
Knute (Neo-LIB)
WE COULD ALLOW EVERYONE IN BUT THEN WE WOULD ALL THE STARVING, RIGHT?
SO THE BEST YOU CAN DO IS THE BEST YOU CAN DO.
GOOD LUCK TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.
Thank you for sharing your story. And, as a fellow American, I apologize for our Government's foreign policies that have contributed to your troublesome experiences. I can not fault illegal aliens for tapping into a system that actually rewards their efforts. I do commend you for taking the high ground and doing it right. My ancestors did. If our Administration would stop providing entitlements to illegal aliens and we spent less on illegal wars abroad, fixed our monetary system, we wouldn't have illegal immigration - and have a more speedy legal immigration. hell, we'd welcome it.
thanks for speaking up. fortunately, the internet is one of the most free formats and markets left in our society. kudos for using it.
Thinking about this post brought home that there are two almost opposite things that people mean by saying that this is a nation of laws. There is a liberal meaning, and a conservative one, and as is so often the case, only the liberal one is true. Although it is the conservative one that is usually appealed to in the immigration debate.
The liberal sense, which I suspect is what Sedaie was thinking of when valuing America, is that we are a country in which the government does not rule by fiat, and in which government officials are not above the law. That is a true value of America, and one that the Bush Administration has been doing what it can to undermine.
The Conservative meaning is that obeying the law is a primary value to our society. And this is not something that has been true of our country. It is not that the law does not deserve respect, but it does not get its place in the pledge of allegiance or our founding documents. And as I said in my previous post, our founding fathers were people who broke the law in the name of higher principles.
While this does not mean we should make heroes out of criminals (although we have a history of doing that too in this country) but it does mean that we should recognize the simplemindedness of thingking that saying "but they broke the law" should settle the issue without consideration of which laws, why they exist, and why they were broken.
sam; i am also an immigrant who came to the US legally along with my family. but unlike you, i'm not going to use my story to justify why people break the law. i moved to america legally, became a citizen after 5 years of having moved here and can't see why no one else can do it. i know it is hard (i went through the process) but who taught you that in life everything worth having should be easy or easier to get. nothing people do honestly and within the law is easy to do. the easier way is to take short cuts and play dirty and i am sorry but i dont share your preconceived view that just becuase it is hard to get a visa we should allow people illegally into the US and let them stay here. and as far as family goes; can you tell me any other crime where the family of the guilty is not affected??? for everything wrong we do in life, there is a price and that price like it or not is also shared by the family. but when we act lawfully and honestly, then we should be rewarded and not the other way around.
There is a difference between people who "justify why people break the law" - as you say Sam is doing - and trying to understand where they come from. It's like saying if we question why terrorists attack us, we are justifying terrorism. Justifying and understanding are two different concepts. This article's longest paragraph is a direct criticism of those who break immigration laws. I think Sam is clear in saying illegal immigrants should pay the price.
The problem with the current debate over immigration is that there are few intelligent or honest options presented by the mostly two sides who are the loudest.
On one side you have Bush, the corporations, many politicians, and illegal immigrant who support amnesty and unlimited future immigration so that U.S. businesses always have a supply of cheap desperate labor.
On the other side, you have the majority of working citizens in this country who see their jobs being taken by illegal immigrants, their wages frozen or dropping, communities overrun and overburdened by poor non-English-speaking and illiterate people who are trucked in to work at slave wages, and who pay little in taxes because they don't earn enough, yet who exhaust the resources of the community by overuse of schools, hospitals, police, fire, emergency services, sanitation, and housing.
Anyone who is here illegally has no legal right to be here, no legal right to work, and no legal right for amnesty. They should all be subject to orders of deportation.
However, realistically, for people who have been here a long time, maybe 10 years or more, there should be some process to apply for and obtain amnesty. The illegal immigrants granted amnesty should have no right to bring their relatives here.
At the same time, the fact that someone snuck across the border a few years ago in no way supports a claim that they are entitled to stay here.
For every person granted amnesty, the slots available for immigration from their country should be eliminated. If we granted amnesty to 5 million people from Mexico, we should halt all immigration from Mexico for however long it would have taken for 5 million Mexicans to be legally given the right to move to the U.S.
That's the only way to try to maintain a fair balance of immigrants from all countries of the world, which is the most desirable situation.
Great story and so very true. A friend of mine had a South Korean woman for a wife and they had a great life in the US with one exception. They had tried for ten years to have her sister move to the states and for some reason never understood they were never successful. The irony of my story is how my friends wife came down with a life ending brain tumor and the sister was allowed to visit the US for the services. We're a great country.
Strictly speaking the murder rate would be zero without laws, so it would not be higher. Presumably there would be more violent death though.
On the otherhand, the law did as much to further segregation as it did to end it. And one of the tools of ending legal segregation was to perform illegal actions. In fact we are a country founded on illegal actions, the Boston Tea Party being one of the most famous examples.
Which is just to note that it does a disservice to the debate to treat absolute obedience to the law as an American characteristic. There is a value to having laws, and respecting them. But there is also a value to breaking them in cases with extreme justification. And different types of law naturally are treated differently when broken. (If true American don't break the traffic laws then there are very few true Americans).
I respect the difficult path your parents have taken to this country. It sounds very hard on you. I also have respect for the difficult path that many illegal immigrants face in establishing themselves here. In most cases I suspect it is actually harder, or at least difficult in different ways.
Mr. Sedaei:
"Without laws, racism and segregation would have continued." -- Racism and segregation continue, laws didn't stop the Jenna Six, or the noose hung on a professor's door.
"murder rate would have been out of control." -- The murder rate (and minor drug-based incarceration) is out of control.
"monopolies would have left the economy paralyzed and inefficient and private possessions could have been confiscated by the government without legal justification." -- Monopolies/corporations aren't leaving the country paralyzed... the country's chugging along, but we have a wealth gap right up there with your Iran... and the government isn't taking private possessions and stealing them from people, it's taking public possessions and privatizing it, again, for the benefit of the government-sponsored corporations/monopolies.
Also, you made no mention of the state's department biased selection process for immigrants. White europeans have it much easier than middle-easterners to get a green card... rich educated iranians have it easier than poor uneducated iranians... canadians have it easier than mexicans... etc., etc., it's a racist system attempting to maintain a certain proportion in the color of the population, which goes back to my very first point.
Imagine that, a country that at least "purports" to decide who can and cannot become a citizen. How novel.
DaCynic;
Racism and segregation has greatly improved and would continue to improve with our laws and hearts believing in our laws.
Have you not questioned this sudden publicized occurrence in racial problems and the very simple fact, of America's first black man running for and has a darn good chance, to become President of the United States of America?
Do you think they help him or hurt him?
Who benefits, if they hurt him?
Welcome to America, Mr Seidel.
I agree with your point. We have to look at our system not relative to a perfect system but relative to how much worse it would have been without laws. There is just one thing I don't agree with you on: Sam's last name is SEDAEI, not what you wrote.
If we add "don't break up families" to our immigration laws, then everyone will realize all they need to do is come here and have children and they'll eventually get citizenship. They already believe that to a certain extent, and the situation would get even worse if we codified that. There's no family break up if they return together to their home countries. Look into the case of Saul Arellano: he's a victim of his mother's choices, not of our laws. And, the only thing keeping them separated is more of her bad choices.
Rewarding those who consistently make bad choices and those who willfully cheat is not good public policy.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. It was nice to hear from someone other than "So called Americans".
I am one of those Americans.
Sometimes forced to break our own unconstitutional laws in my daily life.
There are hypocrites in our government who do not follow our own Constitution and the rights of Americans and immigrants alike our severely jeopardized.
As an immigrant you were welcomed here by the American government legally and so was your brother, I personally am glad your here.
I think there has to be "other" views and international truths spread through out our country, other than the current spinning we are receiving now.
The Constitution describes exactly what should be done concerning immigration. This living document is not being followed. This document has the answer to the right for which every living, breathing human desires. We must look to this document now and read it and follow it.
No more breaking our own laws.
No more allowing illegals to enter this country and suck the system that is the only hope for these same illegals to exist in the first place.
Not to mention the millions of immigrants that have and will be delayed entry solely because of illegals being granted amnesty.(not once, but TWICE!) we have been through this before in 86.
Any other country around the world that has any type of government structure knows that illegal immigration is a drastic expense to its own population.
This country was founded on principles and soulutions for every problem that exists and has the power to grant for those that dont.
This should be followed, like we were taught.
IF YOU ARE IN THIS COUNTRY ILLEGALLY AND YOU HAVE NO PROPER DOCUMENTION GRANTING YOU SUCH, YOU SHOULD BE DEPORTED IMMEDIATELY.
NO QUESTION.
Any other country would do the same thing and it is not fair in the eyes of the law to let one get away with that which others are not.
On that principle ALONE should we never grant ANY type of amnesty. Unless stated in our constitution.
Cont from above
If this document needs to be amended to permit those of certain countries, for certain SPECIFIC reasns that has a sunset clause or those of whom has gone through torture or living through martial law as exists in Persia (in Americas Governments eyes, at the least but most American people too), I guess maybe. But we must follow our governing document and put a vote through congress and have the will of the people be done, not some political parties greedy will.
Live with our founding fathers principles and I will never have a beef with you.
It will grant you happiness unparalleled in the world.
Thanks for choosing America. Some Americans, for obnoxious views, actually think you did not have a choice. But you did and I believe with all my heart you have made the right choice, if my countrymen wake up and allow us all to partake in this document equally and LAWFULLY!
Good Luck.
:)
I think you will find this candidate to your liking.
I dont know much of immigrant voting rights but Im happy to know you will have them. There is a man running on the Republican presidential ticket named Ron Paul.
by your writings, I think you would approve.
No war with Iran.
Rights to protect ALL American citizens from unfair tax and wiretapping.
Close ALL American military bases over seas and bring these troops home.
Do not invade any country without the Declaration from congress through a vote and stop the policy of preemptive war.
The right to self governance by the will of the people and not big Oil or Pharma.
No nation building.
America should not meddle in other countries private affairs.(the Iranian people are smart, Your people are rising, such as ours are.)
No unhealthy or unfair trade practices with other countries...Using our economic power to undermine other countries values and struggles.
This is what we currently have and is causing isolationism from the world.
Sam, check this guy out!
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/privacy-and-personal-liberty/
People go to great odds to come to America --legally and illegally. Makes you realize that the idealistic principles the U.S. is founded upon have wide appeal to people throughout the world. Freedom of religion. Freedom of expression. Freedom to determine one's own livelihood and future. For a large part, freedom from racism and prejudiced (but we still have some troubles to work on there, however).
It is for U.S. Americans to gloss over the emotional feelings and ties of a family torn apart by strict and sometimes prohibitive immigration policies of nations, just as we are near oblivious of the real situation for soldiers of any war going on anywhere, as we speak.
Still, it's hard for me to not fall to the political spectrum/duality mentality. Although, I agree that there is a shift to a new political mindset, of which we all subscribe to in our own ways. This, I believe is beginning to render the GOP less relevant as time progresses, and the advent of truly powerful third-party constituencies.
I am enriched today while reading your well articulated story. You have placed me (the reader) in your shoes and from there I can have a better understanding of your reasoning. The complexities of our world are such that when one chooses to look beyond the differences and examine the comparisons - we are similar in our humanistic capacity to cherish that very basic language of the heart.
Godspeed to you and your family reuniting.
Sigh.
Can we give the Statue of Liberty back to the French now?
It's still easier to become an American than it is to become a citizen of the EU nations, and yet we still have to hear that it's 'too hard'.
Will Iran ever become a better nation if everyone seeks escape instead of change?
Well, in America we have many more rights, which is why people want to come here. In America, if someone wants to give a smug, dismissive comment like you just did, they have that right. And I'd fight for everyone's right to do that!
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