Fifth in a series of articles on comprehensive immigration reform.
The young man wasn't even 21 when he came to America in the mid-'80s on a false pretense --- that he was simply paying his sister in Santa Monica a visit.
He was able to get a Social Security number, which clearly stated "not valid for employment," by simply going to the federal building and saying he ran out of money and needed to open a bank account so his mom could send him some cash.
When he went on a job interview to be a substitute teacher at St. Vincent School in Los Angeles, he had a story all concocted if somebody asked to see his new card. But then he spotted a poster in the office that proclaimed: "How can a human being be illegal?" And he knew his troubles were over.
"Nobody ever looked at me and said, 'This is a potentially illegal alien,'" says Michael Browning, a native of Scotland, shaking his head. "Nobody ever questioned my Social Security number. Nobody ever questioned my fake green card. Because they never assumed somebody who's educated and a white European is an illegal alien.
"It's never happened to me the whole time I've been in this country, and you're not going to get many people with a thicker accent than me. But that doesn't enter into it. If you have brown skin, then, therefore, there's a potentiality that you're illegal, not the fact that you've got a rolling Scottish brogue."
And he chuckles.
The gregarious 38-year-old Scotsman --- like most of his countrymen, along with the Irish and Brits who settled in Southern California in the 1970s and '80s --- was an "illegal." In fact, during those decades he never came across anybody from the British Isles here who wasn't here illegally.
If he was from Central or South America, Browning figures he might still be feeling the hairs on the back of his neck straighten whenever he spotted a police car in the rear-view mirror.
But after 3 1/2 years in the United States, he was sponsored by St. Vincent Church and received a visa. In 1996, he got his green card (permanent residency) in a national lottery for natives of Scotland.
Two decades after coming to California, Browning is not only a naturalized citizen, but also the principal of St. Anne School in Santa Monica. So years ago he stopped glancing behind on freeways and city streets.
The single dad has no trouble, however, remembering what it was like being undocumented. And the empathy he feels for today's newest wave of so-called illegal immigrants is as palpable as the brightly-colored cross hanging on the wall of his tiny school office.
Will impact families
He talks passionately about a single mother he knows from El Salvador who faces deportation. Her particular horrendous "Sophie's Choice" is what to do with her American-born boy and girl attending St. Anne's, who are U.S. citizens. How can she take them back to a country they don't know? But, on the other hand, how can she leave them behind?
"I know what if feels like to be in that situation," Browning says, sitting behind a wood desk with an opened laptop on it. "You have your pride. You don't want people to help you if you can help it.
"I know of upwards of 30 school families who would be impacted by the new harsh immigration bill if it became law - and the parish overall would be highly affected," he notes. "There's nobody in this parish that I know who would not openly defy that law."
The bill the principal is concerned about is H.R. 4437, which was passed last December by the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently before the Senate. Business, labor and religious groups have broadly criticized it as being blatantly anti-immigrant and an enforcement-only bill.
Along with 700 miles of new border fencing to be raised at the U.S. border with Mexico, the measure would make illegal entry into the Untied States an aggravated felony punishable by up to a year in prison. And any social or religious organization brave enough to help a person without documentation would be liable for criminal prosecution and up to five years in prison.
Cardinal Roger Mahony has called the bill ludicrous and absurd, promising that if it becomes law he'll ask priests in the archdiocese's 288 parishes to continue providing aid to immigrants without proof of documentation.
"We're not going to be immigration officers," he told The Tidings in a Feb. 17 interview. "Our role is spiritual and pastoral, and that's going to prevail. But the foolishness of this whole out-of-control thought process is just astounding."
Browning agreed, applauding the cardinal for his efforts to stop the current tide of anti-immigrant hysteria.
Pulpit politics
"There are many people who would say that politics have no place in the pulpit, and the cardinal shouldn't be making these kinds of statements," observes the veteran educator, who has also been a teacher and vice principal at Blessed Sacrament School in Hollywood and a principal at Ascension School in South Los Angeles. "But I think that while there's some truth to that argument, this so contradicts the basic doctrines of our faith that I absolutely applaud the cardinal for standing up and saying what he said.
"I can only hope the people in favor of this bill read the New Testament and look at the actions of Jesus, and see that here's somebody who was all about inclusion. Maybe that will soften their hearts. We're called to be Christ-like; we're called to be Christ for others. We're not called to determine somebody's status before we help them."
Browning believes the bill is more vote-getting bravado by desperate politicians than well-thought-out legislation. But that doesn't make it any less insidious, he asserts, and shouldn't make the fight against it any less intense. He says the more such bills are proposed, the more prejudice and racism are allowed to raise their ugly heads in American society.
This is a "very, very difficult" time to be an immigrant to America, Browning admits. Anti-immigrant feelings are running the highest he's seen since coming to this country, which once proudly welcomed with open arms the poor and destitute to its shores. He calls the post-9/11 level of hatred downright "scary."
"Sometimes it's hard to think of myself as an American citizen," he confides. "But I look at it as an immigrant to this country. And I think as intense as it is right now, we, the European immigrants, are still not bearing the brunt of this."
The former "illegal" admits he feels some guilt over his good fortune.
"It's still people of color who bear the brunt of the latest anti-immigrant sentiment," Browning points out. |