Wonder why we have trained millions to come across the border? It’s not the fence. It’s the stupidity of the buracracy we have created (well…. they have created for us). Wonderful thing big government is. (Tongue n cheek if you couldn’t guess)
Yet another teenager who has presented no problems, but who soon could be here illegally, has found himself trapped by this country’s senseless immigration system. Come April 10, Bryan Laue faces deportation from the United States, despite all his immediate family legally being here.
So fervent are we in this country to seal our borders that we’ve become willing to rip apart families to obey a nonsensical law. This continues even as the congressmen who shout loudest for a wall along the Southern border do nothing about our more porous Northern border. Meantime, the Lima area has another 18-year-old who thought he had played by the rules, but now finds the odds stacked decidedly against him.
As The Lima News reported last week, Christopher Laue, a substitute schoolteacher, brought his family from South Africa to Lima in 1994 when he was sponsored to teach at Bible Believers Christian School. His family returned to South Africa, but came back in 1997. One of the four Laue children married an American and the family wanted to stay together.
Christopher Laue and his wife, Ruth, began the process of permanent residency in 2002. They were told Bryan likely would receive permanent residency, too, since he was a minor. However, he never received his documentation. His parents were not eligible to petition for his residency until they received their approval. They received permanent residency in 2005, when they set out to sponsor Bryan.
While the family continues to wait for approval of its application to sponsor Bryan, the Child Protection Act no longer applies 180 days after one’s 18th birthday. For Bryan Laue, April 10 marks day 180. If Bryan doesn’t leave on his own by then, the government could deport him.
Tragic as this case is, it sheds light on why immigrants from right across the border flout the burdensome laws those who mean to close off this country have imposed. Why play by these cumbersome rules when you can just try crossing in again tomorrow? If Bryan were to remain past April 10, then leave, he could face up to a three-year wait before being allowed to return. If he were to stay a year past his 18th birthday, the government could bar him from returning for 10 years. It’s not hard to see why someone who lives right next door would take his chances on immigration officials ever being able to catch him here illegally…..
Because, for now, the system has caught another teenager who thought he was doing what the system required. You might remember the story of German immigrant Manuel Bartsch, a Pandora student who tried to address his long-expired 90-day visa — only to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement try to deport him. Bartsch’s stepgrandfather brought him to the country when the boy was in fourth grade, but the family never renewed his visa. Late U.S. Rep. Paul Gillmor interceded on behalf of Bartsch…..
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