Gladys and Nelson Gonzalez have called the United States home since 1989. Their three daughters, now grown, were all born and raised in California.
“For nearly four decades, they have built a life here — raising three daughters, giving back to their community, and recently welcoming their first grandchild,” their daughter Stephanie Gonzalez wrote on a GoFundMe page for the family. “Now, they are being treated as criminals.”
Last month, the parents checked in at an immigration court in Santa Ana, just “like they have been doing since 2000,” Stephanie wrote in an email to CNN.
But this check-in ended with a much different outcome.
The couple was arrested and handcuffed during their February 21 appointment and put in federal custody, where they spent three weeks before being deported to Colombia.
“We didn’t expect that they would be apprehended and held in custody. And again, it’s not really unique to them anymore. It’s happening across the country,” Crooms told CNN, pointing to recent immigration policy changes in the US two months into the current administration.
The Gonzalezes spent many years searching for a viable path to citizenship, paid their taxes and never had any trouble with the law, according to Crooms and their daughters.
Ideally, the couple would have been given time to get their affairs in order and say goodbye to their daughters and grandchild, according to Crooms. But that didn’t happen.
“We had to go and pick up their car from the parking lot and didn’t get to say goodbye,” Stephanie said.
So you are here illegally too then? Or should legal immigration receive the same benefits as illegal?
What do illegal jmmigrants do to you? Seriously ask yourself what the impact of these people existing is on your daily life. The folks in this article specifically, came here, got jobs, paid taxes on their wages, and took those wages and contributed to their local economy. How is that any different than me just because I was born here?
They’re willing to do jobs we aren’t because they don’t grow up with the quality of life and/or safety we were lucky enough to get handed just for popping out in the right place. Despite what you’ve been told they commonly are subject to payroll tax. Most of them are desperately trying to obtain paperwork, but our government says no over and over again. The fucking melting pot, right?
You’ve been propagandized to think immigrants did something to you. They didn’t. The end game is going to be you and I shooting at each other in a civil war because the rich people said immigrants are bad. Please wake up. Please everybody wake up.
My problem with illegal immigrants is that they exist in the first place.
If you want to come here, work, and contribute to society, then why the fuck shouldn’t you be let in?
So you’re 100% in support of jailing business owners who hire illegal immigrants, right? After all, to truly solve the supply problem, you need to end demand.
I am. No one should be able to pay employees under minimum wage (which needs to be increased).
Yup - business owners who knowingly employ undocumented migrants should face severe penalties. The state should straight up seize their businesses and throw them in jail for at least a decade.
Immigrants who are in the country illegally:
And the positive side:
Clearly, the easiest way to solve all of these problems would be to make them tax paying citizens as quickly as possible.
But that would upset the xenophobic racists…
Yup - immigrants who come to the country legally don’t cause all those problems.
So what do you propose? To give legal permanent resident status to everyone who shows up at the border?
To abolish all visa policies and let everyone in?
What a limited imagination you have that you can only imagine one extreme or another. Not really surprising for an extremist.
But you certainly made it clear that what you see as the “problem“ is immigrants, not whether they pay taxes or not. Your xenophobia and racism are on full display.
Having any sort of a visa policy means that we have to not let some people in.
But if you reward those who break the law to get in the country - it will just encourage more people to come.
Also why should someone try to migrate legally? Get all the paperwork sorted and everything. Just to see a bunch of undocumented immigrants skipping the line and getting in?
If I come to the USA as a tourist - why do I even have that 90 day time limit? Why can’t you let me stay as long as I please?
We already punish people who come in illegally. It doesn’t seem to stop them.
Your logic is flawed.
The USA has so-called “sanctuary cities” that protect undocumented immigrants. Those cities encourage the immigrants to come, because it’s less likely that they’ll get punished for that.
Or maybe they pay more taxes because they may get taxes withheld from their pay but can’t file for a refund without risking their freedom.
Or maybe the US should support human rights by not involving immigration where it doesn’t belong. We want all people here to have healthcare and car insurance and job safety and at least a minimum wage, and wtf does immigration status have to do with any of that? By tying those together you’re not only making government more complicated but you’re in collusion with exploitive companies in creating an underclass class of people with limited human rights who can be exploited at will
So you’d be all for seizing businesses and jailing business owners who hire undocumented immigrants? Guess which political party these business owners usually belong to?
You have been fed propaganda to hate undocumented immigrants by the right wing, but those same people want an underclass of vulnerable workers to exploit.
Ask yourself why all of these illegal immigrant chaos never focuses on the businesses hiring them? If you truly wanted to “solve the problem”, then you’d want to cut off the demand.