Immigration laws unjust, hypocritical

  Glenn Sacks Sacks invites readers to
e-mail him at [email protected].

When 14-year-old Fernando woke up bloody and beaten in a pool of
ice water at an army base in rural Guatemala, he was happy. Happy
that the men who jumped him, beat him and kidnapped him in the
market where his mother had sent him to buy lemons weren’t
criminals or gangsters but government soldiers. Happy to be
alive.

In Guatemala this is the way the government
“drafted” young men to fight, and they put Fernando in
a counter-insurgency unit fighting leftist guerrillas in the hills
of Guatemala. He was made a radio operator and given a cyanide pill
to put between his teeth and cheek in the back of his mouth ““
to swallow if he were captured by the rebels.

Many of Fernando’s friends, still no older than an
American ninth-grader, didn’t survive the fighting in the
hills. Fernando did and after several months, he was transferred to
the Army’s Intelligence Center working alongside American CIA
officers in interrogating rebel prisoners.
“Interrogation” techniques included placing sewing
needles in prisoner’s eyes and blowtorches in body
orifices.

Fernando, a decent boy, at first refused. “God sees what
we are doing here,” he told his superiors. They laughed in
his face and told him “You’re not in Sunday school,
you’re in the army. You do it to the prisoners or we will do
it to you.” Seeking only to survive, Fernando obeyed the
orders. He became a torturer.

And a good one. He swore and stabbed and beat the prisoners and
got the information that the army wanted. He became one of them and
a few months later, he was even promoted.

One day he was sent to a subterranean prison cell with a guard
and instructions to “interrogate” three rebel
prisoners. Fernando fired up the blowtorch but it didn’t seem
to work. He asked the guard to go back upstairs and hunt down
another one. The guard left and Fernando decided, as he had
planned, to make a run for it.

It would have been easier for him to leave alone. He
didn’t. Stumbling to their feet the rebel prisoners followed
Fernando down a corridor and ran out of the building. Watchtower
guards fired at them but missed. Once in the hills, the four of
them exchanged clothes and went their separate ways. Fernando felt
liberated and began to plot his way home.

But, at age 15, he was in a lot of trouble. He was a deserter
from an army which routinely tortured and killed deserters. Not
only that, but several escaped rebel prisoners had identified
Fernando to their superiors and he was put on a rebel death
list.

Facing death from both sides, Fernando, with the aid of a friend
who was a coyote (a person who smuggles immigrants into the U.S.),
came to the United States where he was granted temporary
asylum.

Talking to Fernando today it is hard to believe that such a
kind, hardworking, gentle man could ever have had two armies
seeking his death. He lives a different life now, a very hard one
by American standards but one which he’ll tell you is the
best he’s ever known.

He works long hours on construction sites as a day laborer,
sleeps on a couch, and has practically no material possessions.
He’s in English class four nights a week and computer class
every Friday, continuing an education that had ended in fourth
grade.

Fernando has no illusions about the United States. He knows that
many Americans don’t want immigrants like him here. He is
intensely interested in the amnesty program being discussed by the
Bush administration, even though he knows it may not include
Guatemalans. Like other immigrants, he’s surviving the best
he can and hoping that someday he can become legal.

America profits enormously from immigrants’ cheap labor
and their willingness to do the dirty, dangerous jobs we
don’t want to do. At the same time, however, we indignantly
reject the suggestion that these same immigrants should be allowed
to live here legally and enjoy the benefits of our society. Perhaps
someday America will end this hypocrisy.

Hopefully it won’t come too late for Fernando. If Fernando
had done what he did in the service of America or captured American
prisoners, he’d be a hero with medals pinned on his chest and
an honored guest at last week’s Veterans’ Day
memorials.

Maybe, like Senator and former Vietnam POW John McCain,
he’d be a well-known leader who is respected and admired.
Instead, this magnificent man is an outlaw here and an outlaw there
““ a man caught between two countries, neither of which wants
him.