Guest Column
View from the Pier
By Herman Sillas
In the early nineteen seventies I served on an advisory committee to the United States Census Bureau. Our committee advised the Bureau on how to count undocumented persons in the 1980 census count. Much rides on an accurate count, including the number of congress members each state receives. Our committee recommended a campaign be launched advising undocumented residents that being counted would be to their advantage. Their paper receipt would be evidence of their presence here in 1980. This fact could assist them in the future to become legal residents and citizens. The message worked. More undocumented residents had themselves counted in the 1980 census than ever before.
Later, congress passed a new immigration law giving amnesty to persons who had been in the United States since 1980. This new law would effect me personally, although at the time I didn’t know it. What I did know was that the new law required every employer to have proof that each employee was here legally.
Our law firm hired a receptionist. Get her papers I insisted. She gave different excuses for failing to provide them. Finally, she admitted she had illegally crossed the Canadian border. Our firm was the first employer to ever ask for papers. She had worked here for ten years. We let her go. So much for employers’ sanctions. Even if she had produced documents, how were we to know if they were fake or not?
A client of ours who manufactured tortillas was constantly raided by the INS. His undocumented employees would return within a week. The INS agents never asked the client for his papers since he was the owner. If they had, he would have had to accompany his employees. That never happened.
What did happen was that an El Salvador mother Zaida left her children and her war-torn country in the nineteen seventies to come to the states. It represented a safe haven where she could get a job and ultimately bring her children to a safe environment. She left them with relatives intending to bring her children across the border later. Time passed. Finally, she was able to send for her children including fourteen-year-old Oscar. He had been harassed by the military and guerillas. Each wanted to give him a rifle to fight the other. Armed guerillas would enter his classroom to recruit young supporters. Ultimately, Oscar fled his country at his mother’s request. He and siblings crossed our border into his mother’s awaiting arms. He then went to school without seeing parts of blown up bodies lying on the road.
After entering college and joining UCLA’s Mexican Folklorico dance group, he met Monica, our daughter, who also danced. They fell in love, married, and have given us three fantastic grandchildren. Once, during one of our many conversations, Oscar told me his mother got her papers after the amnesty in the nineteen eighties. She had proof of their presence here because she had filled out the 1980 census form and kept a receipt. Love destined to be always finds a way.
Today, Oscar teaches at Los Angeles High School. His young Latino students relate to him as he teaches them English and provides living proof that the United States is the land of opportunity. Recently, seven hundred students walked out of his school and joined thousands of others demanding that a comprehensive immigration law be enacted that would prevent their parents from being uprooted and deported. Most parents work and some hold two jobs to make ends meet. They dream their children will become like Oscar in the future.
No one is sure how the Washington crowd will resolve the numerous immigration issues facing our nation as it again tries to carve out an immigration policy. In the nineteen eighties congress dealt with it and made the right decision, because our family got Oscar.
- That’s the view from the pier.
- __________________________________________________
- Herman Sillas, a San Clemente resident and L.A. attorney, can be found most weekend mornings fishing at the San Clemente pier. Contact at: Herman.Sillas@SillasLaw.com
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed by HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com) without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)