Friday, January 19, 2018

Real people, not acronyms--DACA & CHIP

January 19, 2018
8:54 p.m.

Picture this:

Once upon a time, I was born in the state of Idaho. After me, three more kids were born, my two sisters and my brother.

For the next six years, Idaho was my home. My grandparents lived there. I had aunts and uncles there. I lived in a house and played in a yard with my brother and sisters. I started school.

And then--

What? We're moving away?

Yes, all my things were being packed up, clothes and toys and books, and everyone else's things, too. Next thing I knew I was in a car heading for a mystery land called Wyoming.

Why? Better job. More opportunity. A chance for a better life for all of us.

You know. All the usual good reasons to pack up your family and move to a new place.

So there I was: a stranger in a strange land. A new school. New people to meet. A new teacher.

And, oh my goodness! The worst weather ever.

But it grows on you. It's a vast land filled with a lot of space and a few people. Traffic is generally not a big issue.

I lived there for the next thirty plus years, and then I departed to a new mystery, Colorado.

Now the government is coming for me. They are going to deport me back to Idaho, where I have not lived in over fifty years. I know no one. I can't find my way around. I have no job prospects and I will lose everything. I can't even be sent back to my beloved Wyoming, because I wasn't born there, and my parents should never have taken me out of Idaho.

My mother is going to Oregon. My father is being sent to Colorado. My two sisters and one of my brothers will be going to Idaho--without their spouses or children. My youngest brother will get to stay in Wyoming, because he was born there after we moved there. Luckily his spouse and children were also born there. This is one person from an original family of seven who will keep his home and family intact.

So here we are: a whole family divided. My mother alone without my father. My sisters in Idaho, their husbands in Utah. My brother in Idaho, his wife in Wyoming. All our children in Wyoming, but without their children and spouses. Also, their children are alone and also separated from each other based on their places of birth.

What a nightmare! Right?

And yet, this is a reality that thousands of dreamers are facing.

I have heard--or seen in print--the question of why so many have not sought citizenship. First of all, questioners--you don't know whether they have or not. I assure you many have, and for one reason or another have been denied, or delayed or tied up in red tape.

As for the children--I was six years old when my parents packed me up and moved me from my birthplace to a new home. They didn't ask me. I was SIX. They made the decision, and I went along for the ride because I was their kid, and where they went, I went.

No one asked these children for permission or even for their opinions about making a move. And once here, many of them were taught not to mention their birth homes for fear of being forced to leave. When they were older, many had siblings who were born in the USA who might possibly have to be left behind if the others were forced to leave.

And on and on. So many reasons.

Back in the 1980s there was an amnesty program that gave many illegal aliens the opportunity to obtain their "green cards". (I never did see one that was actually green, by the way.)

I spent hours with various people, filling out mountains of paperwork, compiling documents including paycheck stubs and birth certificates, rent receipts and car titles. You name it, I probably saw it. Rental agreements and utility bills in the names of little children who had been born in-state and had valid social security cards. These same children standing beside their parents and translating for me.

Children who had had no choice where they were going to live.

It was sad. But they were so full of hope. Most of the people I worked with had jobs that paid "under the table" or had gotten jobs using the social security numbers of friends or family members. Some had just made numbers up; employers were lax about getting copies of cards or checking their validity.

I was told to take whatever pay and tax information I could get and run up mock income tax filing for the last five years to see how much money they'd cheated out of the government.

In the case of those whom I worked with--not one red cent. No one had dared to file for refunds they would have easily qualified for had they been legal, and so all the taxes that had been deducted from their paychecks stayed in the coffers of the good old USA.

Not one person I did this for owed the government taxes. They all would have received refunds. It amounted to thousands of dollars.

Let me add that of all these people, none were eligible to file back tax returns and claim any of those refunds once they'd obtained their A cards. I'm sure had they owed the government money, they would have been required to file.

So, they paid a price. But they were going to pay it, anyway. Because they wanted to live in a place with better jobs and better opportunities. A place with a chance for a better life, not just for them, but for their children.

None of the people I worked with all those years ago received food stamps or workers compensation or unemployment benefits. A few periodically went to the food bank.

I was a volunteer; I wasn't compensated for my help in any way. Probably a lot of people were, but I was just helping friends, and friends of friends. The tax thing--I can't remember why I was told to do that, but I turned over the data to someone running the show in those days. I don't know what was done with it. All I know is, every time I hear someone say how illegals cheat the government out of tax returns and welfare and food stamps, I remember how fearful these people were, how much money they didn't even TRY to claim and how there was no way they could EVER claim back taxes once they were legal. And that makes me wonder VERY MUCH where these claims of government cheating, food stamp stealing, etc. come from and where the story-tellers got their information.

I wonder that still.

Now, it is true that the people I helped back in the 1980s were all from Mexico. I have absolutely no information or experience of immigrants from anywhere else in this regard. By the time I started tutoring English as a second language, it was a new decade and amnesty was long over. The Chinese immigrants and Japanese students I worked with then had come to this country through legal channels.

And I'm sure there are immigrants who really do abuse the system by claiming income tax refunds and getting food stamps, but I don't believe they are the majority, because it's hard to do that even when you have all the proper documentation and are perfectly within your rights to do so.

By the time I started working with immigrants here in Colorado, it was all medically related. The children I dealt with were mostly US citizens. Most often, at least one parent was not.

We didn't deal with that. We dealt with the case, we dealt with the child, and we feigned ignorance of immigration status.

Until the time when it couldn't be ignored. The time when a child came in for cancer treatment. Her younger siblings were legal and insured by CHIP. She had been brought here at the age of two, and was not insurable. Not by anyone.

But her siblings were healthy, and she had cancer.

Unacceptable.

It was the fight of my life. I argued. I begged. I went over heads. I pissed everyone off. Then I started over again, went over more heads and pissed more people off.

And I won. I got her emergency coverage and she was treated. And once she was out of the woods, she was again uninsurable. But by golly, you take your victories where you can get them.

Had she not been brought to the USA by her parents, would she have gotten medical treatment at home? Not likely. Last I heard, she's alive because she was here.

Either way, she NEVER had a choice. And her parents certainly weren't sorry for bringing her, even though--oh boy--they faced some issues once she was well. Because I opened a can of worms. But I had to. They were cool with it.

Oh, and thank you Colorado Medicaid. I pissed you off, but you came through and saved a life.

CHIP saves lives every day in Colorado and all over the country. It has not been properly funded for 111 days.

And now I have addressed both issues, haven't I? I've made them about me.

But not really.

It's just that--I know these kids. I know the kids whose parents are working hard and still don't make enough money to pay for health insurance. These kids could be my kids, or yours.

I know the kids who have been brought here to live, who don't know any other home, who likely don't even know how to speak their native languages and who would have no idea what to do with themselves if they were sent back to their birthplaces.

And all of those kids--the uninsured, the undocumented--they don't get a choice. Because the are CHILDRED of people who made choices for them.

They shouldn't be punished for that.

And that, dear people, is why at this moment in time, I would really like to kick some congressional butts.

What a nightmare this whole mess of shenanigans has become.

Children.

Sigh.

What a bunch of ass hats. Grr.

Good night!














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