From Yahoo.com:
Davidson, from Centralia, Washington, told KOMO News that he discovered he wasn’t a U.S. citizen when he was turned down for an enhanced driver’s license he needed for a trip to Canada to visit relatives.
“We always figured because he was born to U.S. parents he’s automatically a U.S. citizen,” said Davidson’s daughter, Rose Schoolcraft.
Davidson was born in British Columbia in 1916, but his parents didn’t register the birth with the U.S. government to ensure they knew he was a citizen. He checked up on his citizenship before joining the Navy and was told by an inspector at the U.S. Department of Labor Immigration and Naturalization Service he had nothing to worry about. Now he worries that he won’t be able to prove his citizenship, because his parents were born in Iowa before local governments started keeping records of birth certificates in 1880. “I want it squared away before I pass away,” he says.
Is Leeland Davidson just being a stubborn old man? Surely he wouldn’t get deported. Should he leave well enough alone or should he persue this one?
I’m sympathetic to this man, his situation and his service. I’m glad to hear that his Senator and Immigration are working with him to get the situation squared away before he passes (and hopefully sooner so he can visit family).
Look, his last name is DAVIDSON people, we only care about people with last names like Hernandez when it comes to those “illegals” !
Unfortunately, unless the guy knows how to throw gang signs, he’s not the kind of immigrant currently in this administration’s favor (one of Napalitano’s boyz, so to speak). Sad, actually.
Let’s see, military service doesn’t help with status and being born here doesn’t help with status. Did he go to college in the US? Since when does age mitigate criminal action?
He might owe the state money.
I can’t find any data but I think the Irish were the only other country to emmigrate to t
he US in such larges numbers in a short period of time. Italians are the largest overall number of those that emmigrated but did so over a long period of time. In Ireland, 1.5M people starved to death between 1846-1855 or so. Not all Irish that came here came here legally. The cheapest ticket was to Canada, next expensive Boston and most expensive NYC. Thousands took passage to Canada and came over the border. The Washington Post has an article today about the percent of hispanic populations – 25% of children under 5 are Hispanic. The Irish didn’t stop and neither will the Hispanics. Assimilation is another thing but as you can see from comments below – many Irish kept a ‘separatist mentality’ long after. I can attest to that, I was taught it from birth, it was not to be discussed outside the immediate family (a mere 700 people or so) and only one of five daughters to marry “out”. So, what is assimilation?
“In America, initial sympathy for the starving peasants gave way to anti-Catholic hostility as they began to arrive in droves, forming enclaves in Northern cities. In Boston, for example, immigration rates rose from 4,000 in 1820 to 117,000 in 1850. By the 1850s–1860s, 28 percent of all people living in New York, 26 percent in Boston, and 16 percent in Philadelphia had been born in Ireland. Irish Catholics also dominated immigration to Southern cities before the Civil War (1861–1865); New Orleans was the second-largest port of arrival after New York by 1850.
Throughout the nation, work advertisements stated, “No Irish Need Apply,” while nativist political parties like the Know-Nothings gained power. Hostility often turned violent, as in 1834 when mobs burned an Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Such episodes were etched in Irish American memory, contributing to a separatist mentality long after they achieved success”
I find the timing of the Mormon migration rather significant. Also they have some parallels to Catholicism. [like having a holding tank after you die.]
Thanks for the history reminder, Juturna. Our Irish immigrants came later. They didn’t keep separatist mentality. My husband’s grandmother married a German immigrant.
I think you are a tad fixated on Mormons and Big Love.
#1 Mormons didn’t immigrate
#2 Never heard of “holding tank” despite my many years of catholic education and partcipation. Maybe you could explain.
#3 What other parallels do you see between Mormonism and Catholicism?!
The point of my comments was that Hispanic and Irish are only two groups that immigrated at extremely high rates in a very short period of time – due to large numbers resisted assimilation. Happy for your husband grandmother clearly more progessisve than my family. No one’s married a Lutheran yet.
@Juturna
Could be. I am very interested in other faiths. Actually most of the early Mormons were recent immigrants. Joseph Smith sent emmissaries to Great Britain to recruit before they headed west to Salt Lake City. I am not sure where or how the conversions took place. I must have nodded off while the next door neighbor kids were telling that part.
I can’t explain it, mainly because my vocaulary doesn’t include the right Mormon words or the right Catholic words. The holding tank expression was a kid word trying to explain one of their concepts.
I tend to look for parallels all the time. It was part of my academic training with humanities. (none of which I remember) Often it is something as trivial as a hord of locusts…SLC/Egypt. Nothing to take too seriously.
I don’t think the inlaws were more progressive than anyone. I never knew them. I think he was a Catholic and not Lutheran according to my mother in law. He died when she was 4 of that flu …around 1918. They are all dead and gone now. Actually I was just trying to add something to the existing conversation. It really isn’t important.
I was feeling compassion for Davidson until I came to Elena’s post, which thankfully knocked some sense into me. Veteran, schmeteran. What part of ILLEGAL does this man not understand?
Bwaaahahahahaha @Emma
You got the sound byte down perfectly.
Actually, Moon is right about Mormon immigration. Mormon missionaries were extremely active and aggressive in Britain, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe in the mid-19th century. Their efforts, led in Britain in the early stages by Brigham Young himself, were given a big boost by the economic woes in Europe at the time, including the labelling of the 1840’s as “The Hungry Forties.” Many of Mrs. W’s own relatives were converts of these missionaries in Britain and subsequently took the sailing ships and then the Mormon Trail to Utah.
The Mormons were very smart about it as well. Many ordinary emigrants of that period, upon arriving at ports of embarkation, were taken for everything they had by thieves and conmen. At the major departure port of Liverpool, there was the notorious “Gang of 40 Thieves” which would steal the luggage of the unsuspecting emigrants and then ransom it back to them. Merchants would sell to the emigrants at grossly inflated prices items which they claimed were absolutely necessary for survival in America — NOT. Local innkeepers would charge the emigrants an arm and a leg for lodging and food while the emigrants awaited departure. The emigrants also had no idea about the length of the voyage or the quality of the ships which would take them to America. Many of the British flag ships were filthy vessels fit only for hauling cargo. Of all the flags in the emigration traffic, the British ships were the greatest carriers of contagious diseases and had the highest mortality rates at sea. The Irish were the ones who really suffered, desperate as they were to escape the famine and British rule over Ireland. The ships carrying the Irish to Canada and America became known in the trade as “coffin ships” because of the number of deaths during the crossings.
The Mormons avoided all this by a careful organization of group emigration voyages. They formed a society which itself chartered only acceptable ships. When Mormon converts arrived at the port of embarkation, they were required to go aboard ship as soon as possible to avoid the thieves and conmen. They were given precise lists of things to bring for the voyage, and the LDS itself stocked the ships with adequate provisions. Once aboard, the Mormon emigrants were organized almost like a military battalion, with “elders” in charge — set work schedules, worship schedules, watch schedules, and the like.
One of the reasons Mrs. W is not Mormon is because, during the emigration voyage, in St. Louis, Missouri, in fact, her great-great-grandmother became aware that the Mormons in Utah were practicing polygamy. This was about 1852, when Brigham Young anounced that Joseph Smith had had a vision about the rightness of the practice and that the church was going to accept it as a valid part of the faith. That anouncement caused a split in the church, with even the family of Joseph Smith denouncing the idea.
In any case, great-great-grandma, only 21 at the time, having lost her only child during the sea voyage, and having nearly lost her own life in a hurricane and shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico, decided that she would have nothing more to do with a faith which practiced polygamy. Family lore has it that she told her husband in no uncertain terms: “I will never, ever share my man with another woman!!” Problem was that the “elder” in charge of that party was her husband’s uncle and the person who had paid their passage out of his own pocket. Moreover, this man was a forceful guy who went on to become one of the most prominent early Mormon leaders in Utah and Arizona. Well, great-great-grandma, a spunky little lady of only 21 and pregnant again to boot, had it out face to face with this guy in an encounter reportedly so intense that she would never speak to that uncle or even communicate with him and his family for the rest of her long life. She hauled her husband away from the faith and spent the remainder of her life in Missouri as a Congregationalist. There was no “Big Love” in that family in Missouri. There was , however, in Utah. The uncle on the other end of that argument had ten wives total and over 50 children, the last child being born when the uncle was in his late 70’s. Mrs W has a lot of “cousins” in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona.
I think Emma’s pretty spot on. That he’s a Veteran doesn’t make a difference to me about his citizenship. I want him to get some help but he still needs to prove that he’s an American. It’s on him and I think he recognizes that. He *wants* to do the right thing and the right thing entails risk.
If he can’t (prove legal status) we should explore our options to recoup taxpayer benefits already paid.
This family needs to hire a professional genealogist in Iowa and Nebraska. They would likely find enough evidence to satisfy questions about the citizenship of his parents if that is all the guy needs.