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Almost 20 years ago, two people independently chose to commit crimes. They continued to commit crimes for almost 20 years. Today they are paying the price for those crimes as is their daughter.
The crimes? They wanted a better life by leaving their rural Philippine farms and moving to the big city of Tokyo, Japan. That in itself isn't a crime of course. The crimes came in when they found that they weren't qualified to emigrate to Japan.
The crime was when they each chose to obtain forged passports (a crime) and enter Japan illegally.
As illegal immigrants, they got jobs, again a crime in Japan.
They stayed in Japan illegally for almost 20 years. More crime.
They got married to each other... now aiding and abetting each other in the continued commission of a crime.
They got caught.
They got convicted.
They got sentenced.
Now they have to return to the Philippines in shame as convicted criminals.
I don't feel bad for the couple. They made their choices to commit those crimes. They took their chances and got caught. Now they need to deal with the consequences.
However... there's a consequence of one of their choices that they didn't bother to think about. They had a child while living illegally in Japan.
Japanese law is much like U.S. law in this respect in that the child born in Japan may stay in Japan. Unlike the U.S. they don't get automatic citizenship but close to it.
So here we have a teen girl, 13 years old who knows nothing of her Philippine heritage. She speaks only Japanese, not Tagalog. Her culture is Japanese.
The Japanese government gave the girl a choice. Stay in Japan or go to the Philippines with her parents. She chose to stay in Tokyo.
Yet the press reports people thumping their chests about how this violates the human rights of her and her parents. Excuse me?
All three individuals made choices. No one forced the parents to commit crimes. No one forced the girl to choose to stay with an aunt in Tokyo rather than stay with her parents. The only parties that are wrong in this case are her criminal parents.
We have a similar situation in this country. Here's an example, a woman doesn't qualify for immigration into the United States. So she comes across the U.S.-Mexico border at other than a valid port of entry. That is a violation of U.S. Federal law.
She stays in this country without a valid visa. Again, in violation of U.S. Federal law. So now she's committed two crimes.
She gets a job. Since she has no right or permission to live or work in the United States there's another law broken.
Then she has a baby. THAT is not illegal. However, under U.S. law, the baby is automatically a U.S. Citizen. As a rule, if mom gets caught, she'll be allowed to stay in the United States until the child reaches a certain again. The child is called an "anchor baby".
In most cases, before the child reaches the age where mom would be forced to go back to Mexico, mom's dropped another kid or two, thus ensuring that she gets to stay in the United States.
The part that really riled me though was when the illegal immigrants were protesting a couple of years ago with placards "We are not criminals!".
Yes you are.
You can call yourselves "undocumented workers" but you are criminals in every sense of the word just by crossing the border at other than a legal point of entry. You didn't use the legal point because you knew that you wouldn't be allowed in. This makes you at the least a trespasser.
This is the same as the couple from the Phillipines. They KNEW that they wouldn't be allowed to stay in Japan, so they set about to break numerous laws to do so.
As the joke goes, "Calling an illegal immigrant an undocumented worker is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist."
Illegal immigrants are illegal immigrants. You chose to break the law, deal with the consequences.
Schoolgirl told to choose: Country or parents - CNN.com:
