Green Card Tribulations
As I wrote in my last post, I spent a number of years working in the USA without a Green Card. In the current immigration debate (which comes around like clockwork every 10 years and started with the 1986 Immigration Reform Legislation that granted me Amnesty and put me on the road to citizenship) my sympathies are with those here ‘illegally’ being paid a low wage by employers to do menial jobs. The immigrants, employers and most Americans benefit.
I was never tempted to marry for a Green Card, which was the route chosen by Gérard Depardieu in the epinomous movie. So I was spared the trials and tribulations of a sham marriage. However, there were a number of amusing moments in my life as a wetback.
In 1985 I worked as the tech support guy for a small software company in Berkeley that sold a database product. It was a constant grind of answering 30-40 calls for help a day from frustrated users. One day on returning from lunch I saw the usual pile of pink message slips on my desk awaiting a call back.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw the one asking me to call Mr. Smith at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Busted! With trembling fingers I dialed the number and waited for the INS agent to demand I turn myself in. Wrong! Mr. Smith was having trouble building a small dBase program to track illegal immigrants, and could I help fix it? Over the next week I exchanged tips and tricks with the INS to help them design their database. I must admit I was tempted to introduce a few bugs into the code, but resisted the temptation.
These days I imagine the INS has migrated to Oracle.
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