Proud to Be an American?

or maybe not....

brady has a friend at school who is from india, his wife (also from india) studies in boston. they have a son who is almost a year old, and recently both of their parents came to visit them here in ithaca. brady thought it would be fun if we rented a huge van and took them all to niagara falls as they don't have a vehicle and all eight plus baby are staying in a two bedroom apt. needless to say the cold had them pretty cooped up...

so we went

and this is what happened...

we were all enjoying ourselves on the american side until yours truly thought it would be a good idea to walk across the bridge that goes into canada, just to get a better view, we didn't have time to actually go into canada....so we did that, never entering canada, but not realizing we had actually left the united states.....whoops, no biggie, right? show id, passports, etc, we're good...yeah, right..... although all of our friends are legally here, none brought their passports...whoops again....this also shouldn't have been an issue, if they have passports, visas etc, its in the computer with photo id and everything, they just had to look it up.....

that's it..just look it up....so why, tell me, did one little man have to make such an issue out of this?

he was so disrespectful to our friends, literally yelling and ranting at the top of his lungs

the conversation is so maddening to remember, but here are some of the highlights:

-that our friends should go back to india

-that it was illegal for them to have medicaid for their son, because medicaid is only for "people" yeah that's what he said, "people"

-he was not going to work 40 hours a week to pay for them to get health insurance and better themselves with an education while he is stuck in his job (our friends education is in no way funded by the u.s. they have private grants from organizations from their own country)

-because they had obtained medicaid illegally (right..that happens all the time) that he had informed the ever present 'them' , and 'they' would have a bill totalling every last penny of debt incurred by their medical expenses that would 'come due' as soon as they so much as looked at a doctors office

-that they are going to go home (he liked to say that a lot) and STAY there and have the rest of their babies there, because he was tired of "taking a hit" for all of their medical expenses...

it was a show! all political issues, opinions, and views aside, he does not have the right to treat people like this. he detained us almost an hour nitpicking every detail of their lives and then publicly humiliating them. i was so hurt and embarrassed for them. what's worse is all of the other border patrol officers seemed to treat our friends with contempt. as we were walking out, (they had all seemed to gather by this point), one random officer none of us had talked to blurted out, "you mean i gotta work over time to pay for their kid?" thank you peanut gallery...what does he think he is paying for...he certainly did not buy us lunch, if that's what he meant. it was almost like a game to them, i'm sure they gave all the hi-fives and butt slaps as soon as we left.

i know border patrol has some scary stuff to deal with, my point is these guys checked out, their background is squeaky clean, it should have been so much easier than that. it was so frustrating to not be able to say or do anything out of fear of what they might do to our friends...i just felt like this short little mean man is misrepresenting americans and using the authority he holds to exercise some warped system of beliefs on unsuspecting tourists...

we called to report it only to be put on hold three times for 20 min. hung up on once, and then finally told we should just 'file a complaint online'

i still can't get over it and even thinking about it again makes my pulse go up..... i am just sad that ugly people like that are the first thing people have to encounter when coming to, what i consider, a pretty great country.

and i am still proud to be an american.