Dear Editor:
Your comment in your editorial about would-be immigrants being treated as supplicants to American charity struck a very large bell. I am 63, English-born and educated, went to Canada in 1962 (at 22), and lived and worked there all of my adult life. For thirty five years, I was a professor at the University of Guelph, one of the really good universities in that country, and would be there still except that Ontario forces you to retire at 65. So when in 2000, I was headhunted by Florida State University, and given that I have a wife and three kids, I took the job. And the beginning of the nightmare of trying to get a green card. I should say that I have never been in trouble with the law, and that, without showing off, I am pretty distinguished in my field (twenty books, honorary degrees, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Guggenheim winner, visiting scholar at Harvard and Cambridge, review books in the NYT, and so forth). I suppose I should have realized that it would be uphill when I applied at the border for a temporary work permit and was told that my English university PhD needed to be authenticated as coming from a proper institution. Then the long wait to conversion for an H visa. After that, the ludicrous attempt to speed things up by getting info to show that I am a distinguished scholar, and being told a year later that it would have been quicker had I not gone that route. Then the worry about whether I am allowed to come and go from the country and whether I am able to accept honoraria for talks given elsewhere in the US. Not to mention the bad decision not to apply back in one of my home countries, rather than directly from the US. (Other Englishmen, hired after me, already have green cards.) And so it goes on. We are now 178 days after the application for an H extension, without prospect of an end, except that when I came in earlier this month from Canada, with advanced parole, I was threatened with deportation back to Canada. I was invited here, and I was happy to come. I am not a reluctant would-be immigrant, but then again neither am I a desperate refugee without education or prospects from an unknown Third World country, with no language or other skills. What seems to me to be so silly is that I am having to spend all of this time getting one visa or permission after another for me and my family. It not only ties up my time and that of the people on campus, but the immigration authorities as well. If I were just a junior faculty member, never getting invited off campus and never having to leave the country, without a family and without tenure at this point anyway, it would not really matter anything like as much. But I am put through the hassle at the border and so forth precisely because I am distinguished. I love my job and my colleagues, my family and I love living in Tallahassee, but I really do not think I would have come down had I realized the hassle. Why on earth did I not get a lawyer? well, why on earth would I get a lawyer? I got a lawyer when I got divorced, wrote my will, and bought my house but in this case, there simply seemed to be forms to be filled, and after all was I not a prize catch for FSU so why would there be any hassle? When I emmigrated to canada in 1962, it took ten minutes in all to do the job, including dropping my pants for the visiting doctor. Indeed, Iwanted a student visa and the authorities told me it was easier to emmigrate. I am not saying now that Canada is as easy, it is not, but as I say, this was why the whole process down here blindsided me, and i do not know if a lawyer would have made a major difference.
Michael Ruse
Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University
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