Immigrant Punk

An interesting and somewhat troubling immigration case has recently bubbled to the surface here in Madison. Tope Awe, a Nigerian-born graduate student at the School of Pharmacy at the UW-Madison, was unexpectedly taken into custody by the Milwaukee office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week, and is now being held in the Dodge County Jail awaiting deportation.

According to the Capital Times:

Friends said she had gone to discuss her immigration status. Awe reportedly came to the United States with her family at age 3, and friends said she knows no one in Nigeria.

ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said Monday that Awe was an immigration fugitive with an outstanding removal order against her. Immigration fugitives typically do not have the right to a hearing before deportation, Montenegro said.

The 22-year-old student's father, Samuel Awe, lost an appeal for political asylum in 2003. That decision in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Samuel Awe's removal from his 1993-1995 stint as Nigeria's agriculture secretary, reportedly for not paying bribes to supervisors, and accusations that the frequent resident of the United States had ties to the CIA did not rise to the level of persecution.

Samuel Awe, his wife and three children were originally notified in 1998 that they had overstayed their visas, according to court documents. In denying Awe's appeal, the court granted the family voluntary departure to Nigeria.

Tope Awe was in custody Monday at the Dodge County Jail, which contracts with ICE. Also in custody was her brother, Oluwagbenga Awe, also seized on Thursday. He is a recent graduate of UW-Stevens Point and, according to family and friends, is married with a young child.

Samuel Awe and his wife, Julianah, live in the Milwaukee area where he is receiving medical treatment, according to published reports.

It's difficult to get a firm handle on the situation, as the details of the Awe's visa status are still murky. The family claims that the father's B-1/B-2 visa, for business and medical purposes, allows them to stay here until his treatment is finished. It is unclear, however, if 1) the visa applies to just Sam or to the whole family and 2) the visa is good until the completion of treatment. Sam Awe has kidney disease and has been undergoing treatment for it in Milwaukee for a number of years. I can't imagine he'd be able to get the same level of care if sent back to Nigeria.

Perhaps more confusing is Tope's student status. Having lived in Wisconsin for several years prior to enrolling both as an undergraduate at UW-Milwaukee and as a graduate student at UW-Madison, state residency was apparently not a problem to prove. But if the Awe's were notified in '98 that they were supposed to leave the country, how did they manage to stay on (and, for the children, attend state schools) for another 10 years? How did this never come up during enrollment?

Personally, I believe that anyone who has proven a commitment to being a contributing and law-abiding member of society should be granted permanent resident status. The Awe's seem to have done just that, but were instead rewarded with a denial of either an extension to their stay or a path to citizenship. Tope appears to have been an exemplary student, highly involved in campus life and advocacy while pursuing her studies. That she was asked to come in for a meeting to "regularize her residency status," voluntarily complied, and then simply arrested seems sketchy at best.

Still, all of the facts remain to be seen, and for better or for worse, the law is the law. So the trouble may be less that the law was enforced, and more that the law is broken.

This family clearly wanted to stay in the United States, and were, from what I've read, doing everything they could to do so legally. They paid taxes, registered cars, contributed to their communities, and plead their case all the way up to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals--only to meet with a door slammed in their faces. I can't blame them for fighting tooth and nail to stay here. Unfortunately, with the way the laws work now, they may have little to no recourse in this situation.

It is heartening to know that a significant number of Tope's fellow students and teachers are going to bat for her, pushing for her to be allowed to stay in the country at least until she graduates in 2009. An online petition has already garnered hundreds of responses, a number of UW officials are advocating for her, and state representatives have at least been contacted about the case.

This all just serves as yet another reminder of how complicated and dysfunctional our current immigration laws are. We really do need to find a way to get past all of the jingoism and knee-jerk reactions to the subject, and find a way to meaningfully debate and rework our policies. Policies that should have nothing to do with xenophobia and "dey took er jerbs!" style fear. We are, after all, a nation founded by immigrants (I'm talking about the nation founded long after the first inhabitants arrived here--which is a whole other story, of course). Ignoring that heritage, willfully or not, is hypocritical at best, dangerous at worst.

What rights for illegal immigrants?

Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...just make sure they don't come from south of the border.

Or at least, that seems to be the pervasive feeling amongst Americans these days. A new poll by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute shows that an overwhelming majority of Wisconsinites don't think illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply for driver's licenses or pay in-state tuition at colleges, and they're split on whether their children should be allowed to attend our public schools.

Wisconsin residents overwhelmingly oppose allowing illegal immigrants to apply for Wisconsin driver’s licenses by a margin of 76% to 19%. On the question of allowing illegal immigrants to receive discounted tuition at the University of Wisconsin, 86% oppose the idea while only 10% support it. It is only in the area of allowing illegal immigrant children to attend local public schools that there is some serious movement. On this issue 46% of Wisconsin residents favor it, while 46% oppose it.

I understand that it's an intensely complicated issue, made all the more difficult to figure out by the level of emotion often involved in the debate. From the far-right, you have accusations of job stealing, rampant criminality, and a straight-up feeling of xenophobia. From the far-left, you have calls for complete amnesty. But certainly there must be a middle ground, a place where America finds a way to improve its severely tarnished reputation as a place where anyone can come to improve their lot in life.

Will granting illegal immigrants the right to apply for driver's licenses wreak some sort of havoc on our state? I doubt it. As it stands, illegal immigrants are going to keep driving cars to get to jobs and schools, regardless of whether they have licenses or not. The vast majority of them are here because they want to work hard to make a better life for themselves and their children. And, frankly, it's hard to get a job that's within walking or biking distance from your place of residence (hey, we've just wandered into the infill vs. sprawl debate, too!). So they drive, without a license, without insurance, as a risk to themselves and everyone else on the road.

They're going to keep driving, so we really ought to have a system in place that makes it possible for them to be licensed and insured to do so. It makes everyone on the road with them safer, and shouldn't that be our ultimate goal?

It's the old "you can build a fence around the pool, but you should still teach your kids how to swim and to wear a life jacket, because no matter what, they're going to find a way to go swimming" lesson.

But then, apparently it's my generation alone that actually supports this idea. According to that same poll, "The only real support in the state for allowing illegal immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses came from young people between the ages of 18 and 24, where 64% favored the idea while only 36% opposed it. In every other major age group there was uniform opposition to the idea of allowing illegal immigrants to apply for Wisconsin driver’s licenses." (oops, looks like I'm two years over the cut-off there, but I think I still count)

Why is it that the youngest generation of voters thinks giving immigrants a chance at getting a license is just peachy? I know some of the more curmudgeonly commentators will blame "youthful ignorance and/or idealism" and write us off as inexperienced know-nothings. Frankly, I think it has more to do with the possibility that the younger generation has more experience living/working/leaning in an environment with a greater diversity of people and ideas.

Foreign language speakers don't freak us out.

The idea of what America was and is supposed to be all about is a place of improvement, of freedom, of making something better. Very few of us are real "natives" here. My ancestors came over from various European countries. Some of them probably stole land, kept slaves and forced the native peoples out. How is that not far worse than those people who come here now simply looking for work and a good education? How is it not supremely hypocritical of us now to deny basic services and rights, to build Cold War era-like fences, to send unofficial trigger-happy "minutemen" out to patrol the borders, all in an ultimately futile effort to keep those tired, poor and huddled masses out?

Maybe we're just mad that they're coming in through deserts and the Rio Grande, instead of the traditional front door, as overseen by the more postcard friendly Lady Liberty.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Further reading:

• Border Fence Work Raises Environmental Concerns (NY Times)
• borderambassadors.com
• notexasborderwall.com
• Wisconsin Policy Research Institute full poll report
• Immigrants in Wisconsin (various reports)