I Will Cut People Out of My Life for Asking if My Wife Is Here Legally

Ignorance is no excuse for normalizing language that poses a threat to decent people

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The US embassy in Peru placed a spousal visa in my wife’s passport. They told me it was good for one border crossing, and it expired the moment after we passed through immigration. If we didn’t travel to the US within a year, the visa would expire and we’d never get another one.

“After we arrive,” I said, “will they hand me a card or put a stamp in her passport to verify that she’s in compliance with the law?”

The agent shook her head and explained, “A letter will come in the mail.”

“A letter? Not an official government issued identification card?”

“You’ll be able to apply for a green card at a later date.”

“Okay, but what do I do in the time between when she arrives and when the letter comes?”

The agent just looked at me and blinked. I get that expression a lot in response to what I feel are completely valid questions. The whole world seems to think it’s fine that there’s an interval of time when an immigrant is in the United States legally, but they can’t prove it because they do not possess a valid, government issued document.

This thought weighed heavily on my mind as we pulled out of the rental car parking lot at the Miami airport. It terrified me that I might get pulled over for a minor traffic violation, and end up having my wife sit in jail for a couple days until the issue got sorted out.

She had to prove she had some value, right?

A few months later I was discussing the visa application process with a friend I’ve known for decades. Out of the blue, he turned to me and said, “Now, they didn’t just let her in did they? I mean, she had to prove she could make some sort of a contribution, right?”

I’m not sure what I would say to somebody if they asked me that today, but I’m writing this after having put up with statements like that for 15 years. Back then I took it at face value and answered honestly. “Yes, she’s an educated professional with years of work experience and we had to prove that during various interviews.”

Today, I perceive that question as an insult. What kind of person do they think I would marry? In what universe is it appropriate to ask, “So, your spouse has some sort of value, right?”

Of course she does. All human beings have value. If you ever find yourself asking a question that suggests otherwise, it’s time for a moment of ashamed personal reflection.

Background checks in order to go to school?

One of my uncles is a teacher. One day, he started complaining about “illegal immigrants” in the classroom. In the United States, undocumented children are often educated alongside citizens.

In Plyler v. Doe the Supreme Court determined that all children have a right to education regardless of their immigration status. Apparently, this decision isn’t widely known.

My uncle started going off about the cost to the community and the lost tax dollars. I saw that he was working himself into a rage. So, I asked, “Do you want border agents coming to the school to interrogate your daughter over whether she is in the country legally? How much do you think an operation like that would cost?”

He blinked at me and replied, “Why would they do that? She’s a natural born citizen.”

“Yes, but the police don’t know that do they? How are they going to remove undocumented children from public school unless they investigate everyone? It’s not as if only terrorists have to go through security at the airport. Everybody has to be searched. Who is going to pay to send officers to every school to go through citizenship papers? Think of the time, think of the effort, think of the expense. Don’t you think it’s better to spend those resources educating children?”

“But it’s unfair, they’re cheating!” he bellowed.

I’ve found that the fixation on righteousness is often the real issue. There’s never any talk of an evaluation to determine whether the cost of policing human behavior is greater than the cost of the behavior itself.

I persisted. “So, basically you’re saying you want the kind of background checks for sending kids to school that you oppose without exception when it comes to infringing upon somebody’s right to buy a gun?”

He refused to answer.

With all the hate rhetoric that’s unfairly directed at immigrants, it’s bizarre that nobody has tried to leverage it as an argument for common sense gun control. How is it that politicians and the media are able to compartmentalize competing political issues in such a way that the hypocrisy of our ideology is never exposed?

I assume your wife is here legally?

A few months ago somebody engaged with me on a social media platform. She was a conservative, but she wanted to demonstrate that it’s possible for people with opposing viewpoints to be “mature” and “still get along.”

I told her that was fair enough, and I asked her if she could speak out against all the hate rhetoric that’s directed at immigrants. I told her that my wife is an immigrant, and the language that appears in the media often leads to acts of aggression against both her and my daughters.

“Well, I assume that your wife is here legally?” she asked.

That was the end. I blocked her. I will not tolerate the suggestion that violence or harassment is acceptable if it’s directed at a human being that doesn’t happen to be in possession of proper paperwork. As I said before, even when you go through the process to the letter, there are blind spots that might extend for weeks or months when you might not be able to prove your legality to the satisfaction of a law enforcement agent.

My wife always says, “When people are racist, they don’t stop to look at your identification. They respond based on your skin color or hair color or accent.”

This idea that aggression is somehow acceptable based on whether a person is here legally is offensive. If we validate the concept of vigilante justice, a lot of innocent people are going to end up hurt. If you didn’t realize that before, now you do.

Are the blind spots accidental or deliberate?

There are a lot of blind spots in our society where we’re expected to cross our fingers and hope for the best. When people change jobs, they sometimes have to endure weeks or months with no insurance coverage. What happens if they can’t afford a short-term plan? What happens if the short-term plan doesn’t cover the medications they need? Why don’t we ask these questions?

What happens if you’re a legal immigrant who gets beaten to death by a violent mob because you can’t produce a government issued ID? When you consider that scenario, you recognize how it constitutes a threat to ask “Are you here legally?” That phrase is appallingly offensive.

As a husband and a father, how do you expect me to react when somebody uses charged language against my family? Now, ask yourself why that viewpoint never receives equal representation. Why haven’t you been warned that this line of questioning is inappropriate?

Some people think it’s too extreme to remove friends and family from your life for what they believe to be a minor transgression. But it’s easy to come up with potential scenarios that show how blind spots in our society can be exploited to harass the innocent. Clever predators can and do take advantage of these areas to indulge in victimizing innocent people under the protection of the law.

That should terrify you.

We can’t continue to normalize language that poses a threat to decent human beings. The first step towards finding a solution is to recognize that there is a problem.

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