This week in immigration story highlights

The cover piece from the Washington Post's Sunday mag is pretty well fleshed out.

To paraphrase something Huckabee said when Romney was trying to score points off of him in a Republican primary debate, aren't we a better country than one that punishes children for what their parents did? Don't we want these kids to grow up to be contributing members of society? Don't we want them to be taxpayers? I know it's not that simple, of course, but this seems like one of those cases where the rule-making should also allow for common sense.

I think if this kid's lifestory were put to a popular vote, a sizable majority of Americans would vote to let him stay. Maybe that's just me being notoriously bad at reading the popular mood, though. Immigration, particularly of the illegal kind, is one of those fun issues where any notion of left and right quickly disappear, and people get very emotional very quickly.

This piece is not from this week, but it's still topical, since it was just over a year ago that Ms. Abstract Citizen and I listened to this This American Life show on our drive back from a lovely wedding annviersary visit to the Inn at Little Washington. I had just found out that my employment authorization was screwed up, and went on a 4-week long leave of absence that led to the creation of this blog. We didn't know what would happen or how USCIS would look on the whole situation. Act Two (This American Wife) had us silently contemplating just how tenuous life can be when you marry someone from another country.

Lessons learned: life is best when you can avoid dealing with governments and forms. Whenever possible, live in the country you were born in. And marry people from that country. Otherwise, you won't be able to abide by lesson one above, since a good portion of your free time (and mental energy) will be dedicated to dealing with governments and forms.