Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Upside of Being An Illegal Alien

I received the following letter from my father-in-law. You just have to love America ... and their creative solution to the illegal immigration problem.

(Actual letter from an Iowa resident and sent to his senator)


The Honorable Tom Harkin
731 Hart Senate Office Building
Phone (202) 224 3254
Washington DC , 20510


Dear Senator Harkin,

As a native Iowan and excellent customer of the Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask for your assistance. I have contacted the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to determine the process for becoming an illegal alien and they referred me to you.

My primary reason for wishing to change my status from U.S. Citizen to illegal alien stems from the bill which was recently passed by the Senate and for which you voted. If my understanding of this bill's provisions is accurate, as an illegal alien who has been in the United States for five years, all I need to do to become a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and income taxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious to get the process started before everyone figures it out.

Simply put, those of us who have been here legally have had to pay taxes every year so I'm excited about the prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in return for paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively? This would yield an excellent result for me and my family because we paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005.

Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin using the local emergency room as my primary health care provider. Once I have stopped paying premiums for medical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a year.

Another benefit in gaining illegal status would be that my daughter would receive preferential treatment relative to her law school applications, as well as 'in-state' tuition rates for many colleges throughout the United States for my son.

Lastly, I understand that illegal status would relieve me of the burden of renewing my driver's license and making those burdensome car insurance premiums. This is very important to me given that I still have college age children driving my car.

If you would provide me with an outline of the process to become illegal (retroactively if possible) and copies of the necessary forms, I would be most appreciative. Thank you for your assistance.

Your Loyal Constituent, (hoping to reach 'illegal alien' status rather than just a bonafide citizen of the USA )
Donald Ruppert
Burlington, IA

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2 comments:

  1. I know this is a non-linear response, but for some reason your post reminded me of Sting's song, "Englishman In New York", probably because of the lyric:

    "I'm an alien,
    I'm a legal alien,
    I'm an Englishman in New York".

    But the thing is, Sting was a LEGAL alien!

    Mutatis mutandis, this song was close to my heart during my first few months as an American immigrant in London in 1994. And the fact that England is my ancestral country and culturally close to America - yet just distant enough to cause some cultural friction between me and my English cousins - made this song all the more poignant for me at that time, as my experiences in London mirrored what Sting sings about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doYNBHE8Yes

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  2. And more thoughts on living outside one’s native country, as Isabel has done in much more extraordinary ways than I:

    The three countries I’ve lived in long term other than my native country of America – they were England, Russia and China – gradually taught me a paradox about cultural differences. The paradox is that the closer a “foreign” country is to your own, the more you feel the tensions between that country’s culture and yours. And the more different your host country’s culture is, the less tension you feel.

    I felt the cultural differences and tensions MOST acutely in England, precisely BECAUSE England’s culture is so close to mine, and this was exacerbated by the fact that the English are LITERALLY “family” to me.

    I felt less tension, less cultural clash, in Russia than I experienced in England, because Russia’s culture is considerably different from mine. But not too different. The Russians are, after all, Europeans – a very peculiar kind of Europeans, and arguably marginal to European civilisation (just like America is), but we share the same deep roots in Europe and particularly in Rome and Greece. And the Russian language is distant cousin of English, like a “second-cousin” on the family tree of languages.

    But I felt very little cultural tension in China, because China is SO alien to me that the cultural differences between me and the Chinese are NOT VERY PERSONAL! The differences between me and my Chinese friends are easily written off as “we’re so alien to each other that we can never really understand each other, so let’s just be friends, in a distant way.”

    But my cultural clashes with Russians were more intense than the ones I had with the Chinese, BECAUSE the Russians are more similar to me.

    And my cultural clashes with the English were the most intense of all, BECAUSE we are so alike in so many ways!

    In the first book of Winston Graham’s series of “Poldark” novels, about an English Army captain who returned home from fighting in America in 1783, one of his friends asks him, “What are the Americans like?” And he says, “Very much like us. That’s why they beat us.”

    Hmmm... ;-)

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Isabel Van Fechtmann

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