Car Seizures
We the people of the United States, by means of our elected representatives, have chosen to make it more difficult for people like our grandparents to come here to live and work and raise children like you and me, who can enjoy the fruits of the American dream. It is our duty as citizens to know the law. Our representatives enact it. Our votes can change it. Ignorance of it is no excuse for violating it.
Cousins and other relatives of non-citizens have to know it, too, and they have to be extra careful not to end up as accessories to immigration-law crimes. They are presumed to know whether their relatives have a right to be here. If they give an illegal-alien relative a ride they can lose their cars, just as common alien smugglers do. Housewives also are prohibited from giving rides to illegal-alien maids. They risk forfeiture of their cars just like everyone else.
My job as an immigration lawyer is to help the people who run afoul of the immigration law. But that does not give me the right to whine and snivel about the INS doing the job our Congress gave them to do. Your article (“Law-Abiding Motorists Are Sideswiped by INS Seizure of Vehicles, Critics Contend,” Sept. 18) criticized INS vehicle seizure Officer Stan Holman. All Stan Holman does, in my experience, is attempt to carry out the duties of his job as the law requires. If someone with a Ph.D in psychology is not able to understand that logic, then you and I should make the logic more simple. We should write our senators and representatives in Washington and tell them to end our national hypocrisy and make our law follow the high-sounding words under the Statue of Liberty.
In the meantime, however, you won’t hear me, an officer of the court, complaining that the INS is doing the exact job Congress told them to do. That would be misleading and unfair.
We have a bad immigration law. We should all work to change it. But, until that happens, let’s not shoot the postman who brings us the bad news we sent to ourselves.
PIETER D. SPEYER
San Diego
