IMMIGRATION
/Professor Sabrin, Ph.D response
Regarding ”President’s immigration bill unveiled” (Page 1A, Feb. 19).
I arrived in America with my older brother and parents, the only members of their respective families who survived the Holocaust, from war torn Germany in 1949, three years after they left their native Poland.
As I recall my father told me he wrote his great aunt in New York City who responded quickly with the appropriate instructions to obtain sponsorship so we could immigrate to America. My father was thoroughly vetted in West Germany inasmuch as he served as a partisan commander in his struggle against the Nazis. We sailed for America in early August 1949 and settled in the lower East Side of Manhattan.
In America we did not receive any public assistance but the support of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a nonprofit organization founded in 1881 to assist Jewish refugees, and is now known only as HIAS as its mission is to help as many refugees as possible.
The solution to our intractable immigration problem is quite simple: anyone who wants to come to America needs to obtain sponsors who would be responsible for their well being until they become financially independent.
As far as the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in America are concerned, they should become permanent residents with no path to citizenship since they did not follow the rules as tens of millions of immigrants did before them. After all we are a nation of laws, or are we? The so-called dreamers could have a path to citizenship, which should be open to negotiations
For more readings on restoring civil liberties, go to murraysabrin.com
