The American Spectator

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GK br> Arizona /p>

We're having the same problem up here in Canada, as some 120,000 illegal Portuguese are being deported as a beginning to getting the illegal immigrant problem under control. I am an American living in Canada legally, and it cost me $1,800 in fees and three years of intensive paper-gathering, traveling back and forth, and preparations to get my Permanent Resident card. The fact that some Portuguese family decided just to come over here and squat, planning to reap for free what I had to work and pay for, does not move me -- not even when I see them weeping at the airport as their free ticket back to the country where they legally belong is handed to them. The thing that bugs me most, though, is the loud howling that these people are "Honest and hard working" -- and have been "playing by the rules" -- when they are living here illegally, paying no taxes and yet sucking up benefits that are being extorted from my legally-earned paycheck.

p>Guest workers they are not. A Guest does not come in through the basement window and take up residence in my rec room without my permission; a Guest comes to the front door, rings the doorbell, and waits for me to admit him before he comes in -- and when his visit has expired, he goes home. People who come in on visitors' visas and never go home are not Guests. And they all need to go home br> -- Kate Shaw /p> p> If I hear that phrase one more time, my head will explode. When 89 to 90 percent of the people in this country have been born here, stating that we are a nation of immigrants is insulting. br> -- unsigned /p>

Legal vs. illegal immigration is much in the news these days, in columns, blogs, cable news programs and talk radio. I'd like to share some information about my own immigrant ancestry which may be of some interest and. perhaps, shed some light on the problem.

My paternal grandfather James Boe emigrated from Bergen, Norway, as a boy of eight along with his father, mother, and four brothers. At the immigration center much trouble with spelling his name occurred because "oe" is an umlaut pronounced by extending the lips while saying "o." The official tried Bough, Bow, and others until in disgust he wrote Johnson, which was the family name of a Swedish family whom the Boes had met on the ship. The fact that this was OK with the Boes is the first indication that they were agreeable with assimilation.

As with many Scandinavians of the time, James Boe's (now James Johnson) father was solicited by our government which was passing out parcels of land along the Northern Pacific Railroad's right-of-way through the Dakota Territory and points west. It was advisable to populate that strip of land with farmers in order to generate shipping for the railroad. Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns were sought because of their familiarity with agriculture in frigid climes.

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