DAN K. THOMASSON U.S. immigration laws are irrational

WASHINGTON -- Isn't it amazing that a nation built on the minds and muscle of immigrants has no coherent policy to deal with what may now be close to the top of its most pressing problems -- immigration.
For decades, the interpretation of laws dealing with aliens was left up to a thoroughly discredited agency, the old Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Justice Department.
The story goes, and it is not apocryphal, that one INS chief, a former general of more than usual imperiousness, once decided arbitrarily to arrest a man on the street, put him in an airplane and ship him off to a climate as intemperate as the general's nature without an overcoat. This took place despite the fact the immigrant's case was being heard in court, where the judge had given him immunity from such action until the matter was settled.
That kind of embarrassing lack of common sense on the part of the nation's immigration officers was at epidemic levels throughout much of the agency's history and some of it seems to be carrying over in the new Department of Homeland Security, which has merged both the highly regarded Bureau of Customs and INS into a new division. Yet it would be difficult to blame only the misguided immigration louts of the past or those who are now trying to make some rational decisions based on laws that make that at times next to impossible. Congress clearly is at the heart of the matter.
Take the issue of foreign-born widows or widowers whose American spouses have died before they had been married two years. Under those circumstances the wife or husband automatically loses the right to permanent residence in the United States. The rationale for this 1990 law was that too many marriages were being arranged to get a green card for foreigners. Although it has been subsequently modified to exclude spouses of someone killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or in the service defending America, it has had an outrageous impact on those whose mates have been killed accidentally or have died of natural causes.
Case in point
There are reportedly 25 of these cases pending, and the press recently detailed one in which a truck driver's 27-year-old widow was summarily put in shackles and held in a cell for seven hours before her attorney got her released on the promise she not leave Oregon before she could be shipped out of the country. This took place despite the intervention of three U.S. senators and a congressman. According to newspaper reports, she was then ordered deported to her former home, South Africa, simply on her failure to meet the two-year requirement. Ten years must pass before re-entry applications can be considered.
Fortunately, she has no children. That is not always true, and small offspring of the union who qualify as citizens because they were born on American soil face either losing a surviving parent if it is decided they would do better staying here with relatives or being effectively disenfranchised if they leave with the surviving parent.
The problems of immigration have intensified dramatically since 9/11 as the country tries to deal with the threat of terrorists. The recent bill to reform the nation's intelligence apparatus was stalled for some time because of provisions designed to make it more difficult for foreigners to get driver's licenses that might be used in furthering terrorist activities. How many illegal aliens now live and work here is anyone's guess, probably millions.
Still, Congress and immigration authorities waste time worrying about a former au pair whose husband was killed in a highway accident after an extended courtship and 11 months of marriage while the 9/11 maniacs escaped detection. Presumably, an arranged marriage for residence reasons would be over quickly and easy to spot. Couples living together full-time and having children in the process usually don't fall into that category. The truck driver had met the au pair here and even pursued her to South Africa when her job ended. It was, from all evidence, a marriage of love -- not convenience.
This dumb law does nothing to help sort out the chaos caused by an incoherent and often-unfair policy. It merely makes us all look bad in a world determined to paint us as hypocritical and unjust.
X Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.