For The Archives -- August 26, 2024

Locator: 48458ARCHIVES.

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Personal Relevancy And Interest

1. My wife's paternal grandfather was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who crossed into Texas, and married a citizen of the United States. They had at least one child. My wife's paternal grandfather was returned to Mexico "under duress" and never returned to the states. Although married to a US citizen, he had no legal status in the US at that time and was returned to Mexico -- some eighty to ninety (?) years ago.

2. My wife's father, raised by an aunt in Texas, was a 30+ year US Army veteran, having been one of the children of the marriage described above. His Texas mother was a US citizen and that made him a US citizen; his father, married to m wife's mother, as noted above, was an undocumented visitor to Texas and returned to Mexico, "under duress."

a. Why was my wife's father raised by an aunt and not his mother? His mother died after having four children by the same father -- the undocumented immigrant described in paragraph 1 above.

b. My wife's grandfather lived a quiet life with his Texas wife (before she died) and their four children, including my wife's father. Her undocumented grandfather was dating another Texas woman who ultimately -- for whatever reason --  alerted the authorities to his undocumented status which ultimately resulted in his deportation.

c. [I am unclear to the timing of those particular events, but one can probably connect the plausible dots. When his mother died, my wife's father, age five, when to live with an aunt who already had twelve children of her own.]

d. As an aside, I met my father-in-law's baby sister decades later. I never met his other sister (died before I knew the family) or his brother, with whom the family lost contact when he moved away from the Texas homestead.

3. My wife's mother was an 18-to-19-year-old Japanese citizen living in Yokohama, Japan, when she married my wife's father, a US citizen by birth, serving in the US Army, fighting in the Korean War when he went to Japan on "R&R" -- rest and relaxation. Prior to being allowed to marry that US serviceman, my wife's future father, the Japanese teenager was "investigated" for a full year before the marriage request was approved. When they returned to the states, my wife's mother when through a naturalization process to include taking a citizenship test, which she passed and became a naturalized citizen. 

4. My wife's birth certificate was issued by the US State Department; she having been born in Japan. Her mother was about twelve years old when the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. 

In a long note like this, there will be content and typographical errors but the general gist of the narrative is accurate as best I know.

Not knowing all the facts of the "Biden" program, I have sympathy with the president's intention, but that intention needs to be codified through an act of Congress and signed by the President, and not simply by "executive order." My hunch is that between 1619 and 1865 there were a lot of undocumented immigrants whose descendants and they themselves became US citizens. 

Interestingly enough, the road to citizenship for enslaved men and women in the United States also began with a presidential executive order, but it also required three constitutional amendments to complete the process (the 13th, 14th and 15th).

That executive order? Abraham Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation."

Regardless of all the particulars, it's somewhat of a miracle that I am the father of two incredibly wonderful daughters and the grandfather of five equally incredible grandchildren -- all of whom are citizens of the United States whose ethnicity includes but not limited to:

Norwegian, German, Hispanic-Mexico, English, Scottish, Japanese, and Russian.