They line up in darkness, as if drawn out by ultrasonic bat sound. It is, I think, the largest criminal gathering ever. These are people of long ambivalence and daily stealth: half a small nation on the lam. What must it be like, to have no legal standing at work or in your own bedroom? While I write—May 4, midnight—they surround the New York Immigration Service office, ten thousand or more illegal aliens, flushed from cover by amnesty. They seem furtive and mistrustful: after all, they’ve been ducking authority for years. Nonetheless, they come: to secure the most valuable piece of paper in print—their American permanent resident’s green card.
And in a classroom, one week earlier, I sat with 15 or so skittish men and women, listening to immigration lawyer H. Reid Shaw. More than half my fellow students were white and young—I mean, they looked American. Most had let their temporary visas lapse. Now they were trying to figure some angle that would produce permanent residence. No simple trick, that: it may be easier to candle a China egg than to become American.
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