IMMIGRANTS NEVER WORK

One of my favorite American essays is Bonnie Smith-Yackel's "My mother never worked". Bonnie Smith-Yackel used this satirical title in her essay to detail her mother's life of hardship, running a farm on her own as a widow and raising seven children on her own but in her old age was denied social security benefits for this simple reason, "your mother never worked", meaning she did not have a conventional job and pay taxes like the average American. I am borrowing from Smith-Yackel's satirical title to respond to the unpatriotic report published last week by the Heritage Foundation about the $6.3 trillion cost of legalizing undocumented immigrants.


Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said, "There are three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies and statistics." Last week's report by the Heritage Foundation was yet another attempt to use statistics to tell a lie to derail the current effort to fix our broken immigration system and cause hate and divide between Americans and future Americans who hold this nation in such a great esteem. I am not sure where Jim Demint and the Heritage Foundation found the kind of immigrants they based their study on, but I will tell you the kind of immigrants I run into in my daily life on eastern Long Island, starting with myself.


Foremost in most immigrants minds after they step their feet in this country and get settled in some measure is to seek reunification with their loved ones; parents, wives, children, siblings, fiances etc. The number one rule about being able to invite a family member is; ability to demonstrate that you can sustain yourself and your oncoming family member(s) hence surviving on public assistance is a disqualifier by the Department of State from bringing your family member(s) to the United States. So my friends in college never understood why I forwent  financial aid. The educational representive at my union office did not understand why I would not just take the tuition voucher and go away; she had to give me an education on how my union tuition voucher was not a public assistance but a benefit available to all union members before I would sign up for it. To me. nothing was going to stand in my way of bringing my family to America.  Jim Demint, there is nothing glamorous about living on welfare even for natural born Americans. The billions of dollars that are wired off the shores of this country through Western Union and Money Gram annually are not half of a welfare check, it sweat, blister, blood and two to three jobs so that our relatives at home can live on our welfare.

Finally, I want to share three stories of three immigrant families from three seperate countries here on the east end of Long Island. Family one: French speaking, use to go their home to help the wife with her essay when she was in English as a second language class. I used to scream, "what the heck were you trying to say here" and she would look at it and say, sorry Wayne, I start typing in French when I am sleepy." That was 2003. Today, she is a physical therapist, husband has been working as a janitor in two or more jobs for the last decade and daughter is a premed student. Second family: husband worked for seven years brought wife and two children here; French speaking, both children on honor roll after just three years of public education, father is retraining for a higher paying job. Third family: husband came here worked brought wife and two children. Though from English speaking country, wife had to take English lesson at the Riverhead library before enrolling in a local community college. Four years after starting her English lessons, she is now a registered nurse. They moved out of the area. To some misguided person out there, the interpretation of the Heritage Foundation study is "Immigrants never work, they come here so that they can get on welfare." Please use the Heritage Foundation formula and pick which of these three immigrant families is going to put a $6.3 trillion burden on America.