Noriko Calderon allowed to stay in Japan (for now)

Anytime the children know nothing but Japan, they should at least allow the children residency. This is the perfect example of why you can’t just kick people out.

I really feel for these people. As an American who lived in Japan and got married there and had a normal life, it is a bizarre feeling that people could say it wasn’t my home. It was my home. It was bizarre coming back to America too, since it didn’t feel like home anymore.

When I go to Japan, there are two messages at the airport. One that says “Welcome to Japan” and the other that says 「おかえりなさい」. I’ve always wondered which one applies to me.

So, even if her parents are illegal, that poor girl IS Japanese. You can’t take that out of her no matter what. All she knows is Japan.

I just don’t understand how people can be so worried about immigration in this day and age. We are really all in this together.

If they feel the parents need to be punished then send them back and let the girl go to a boarding school in Japan.

Myself, I’m a big fan of jus soli – that those who are born on the soil of a country are a citizen of that country. Also, what Jeshii said.

I feel as if I have a unique outlook on this issue, both as a product of illegal immigration and having it happen so close to me. I’ve seen both the good and bad parts of it.

First, I am a product of illegal immigration. My great-grandfather stowed away on a ship from Dublin, Ireland to New York in 1900. He was only 6 at the time. From New York he traveled to Utah and lived there with family until he was able to take the Naturalization Test. He did so at the very first opportunity he could. After that he worked until he had enough to bring his mother here. She came here through legal immigration. Granted, my great-grandfather was an illegal when he came here. But, he didn’t try to take the easy way out through Jus soli or Jus sanguinis (Although he did marry an American, that was well after he already had American citizenship).

Secondly, I’ve seen the bad side of Illegal immigration. My neighbors are illegal immigrants. I’ve lived in this house for 14 years now and my neighbors have lived next door for 12. When they first moved in they consisted of a mother, father, 2 boys, and 2 girls. I went to school with one of the boys and that is where I learned that he and his family all had crossed the border illegally. They had bought the house outright by having their cousins lend them the money (no going through banks and loans) and were going to repay them by working in the fields. During the summer the entire family worked the fields and during the rest of the year they worked doing odd jobs. After a year the parents had another child. Eventually as the children grew up and turned 18, they each in turn went back to Mexico and brought back a wife/husband. Almost all the time their partner/themselves were pregnant by the time the returned. Each one had an “anchor baby” here not only ensuring that they got to stay here but that their wife/husband would too. And so despite being here far longer than the Naturalization Test requires they all took the far simpler route. None of them left the home afterward (15 people in total). Recently they purchased a farm on the outskirts of our town and have divided the people living here into each of the houses. The mother and father and their child and the younger girls and their spouses/children now live there while the older boys and their families live next to me.

When such things happen here I can only hope that it serves as a warning to other countries not to allow Jus soli.