In the Land of the Free

In the Land of the Free is a story about two Chinese immigrants, Lae Choo and Hom Hing, who come to California for a better opportunity. When Lae Choo finds out she is pregnant, she goes back to China so that her and Hom Hing's child can be born in their native land. Lae Choo's return back to the United States is delayed when Hom Hing's parents become sick, causing her to stay and look after them. When his parents die, Lae Choo returns. When she gets off the boat to greet her husband the officers refuse to let her leave with her son. The problem is that when they first filed their immigration papers they didn't have a child, so he does not have proper identification to be allowed to stay in America. He is then taken away from then until they get word from D.C. that he is legally allowed to be with his parents. When things seemed to not progress, James Clancy, a lawyer that Hom Hing knows, offers to help them get their son back to them for a large sum of cash, which Choo and Hing obviously do not have. Lae Choo, so distraught, offers this man all of her fine jewelry as payment.  Confirmation finally comes from D.C. and Lae Choo is very eager to go pick her son up from the missionary of which he was staying. When they meet, her child says, "Go' way! Go 'way!"

                                                         

This is really sad to me. They have legally done everything to be part of this country and yet they have to wait for a letter from all the way across the other side of the United States? This isn't like today, they didn't have fax machines or anything, this took 10 months, which probably felt like 10 years in the mind of a mother. I don't see why they couldn't have stayed with their child, or perhaps the Customs Officer could have made record of this and allowed Little One to stay with his mother and just have sent them a letter when they needed to come back to straighten this out. This is just one example of how badly immigrants were treated in this time in history. Even though they have done everything to be true and right to a country with strict laws on immigration, they did not seem to receive the same kind of respect, or dignity.  The lawyer also took advantage of them. He knew they wanted this desperately so he saw an opportunity to make money. This is also a prime example of what was going on in this time. Here we have Chinese immigrants who just want to make an honest living and because of their lack of knowledge of how the system works, they are completely helpless. I also think that it is funny that they heard no word on their son until money was involved. This says something about the United States and is still true today. Money talks. Because of the way they were discriminated and treated, their son did not even remember who his mother was and that is utterly heartbreaking.