The Boston Herald’s favorite illegal alien has returned to Belgium
Expatica reports that the Belgian nanny who conquered the Boston Herald‘s heart has returned to her native Belgium after being deported from the United States for violationg her visa:
“After 12 years in the US, I now need to start from zero in Belgium,” Vannerom told commercial broadcaster VTM on Saturday.
That’s gotta suck pretty hard. Going back to Europe after a dozen years here…yikes. Not a pleasant concept (but as Castro’s groupies like to say: “She’ll get free health care!”).
Expatica gives a slightly different version of the events that led to her deportation than the Herald did a couple of weeks ago. According to Expatica, Vannerom’s main sin was to work as nanny while she was in fact in America on a student visa.
I did not notice this until now, but the Herald has gone totally bleeping bonkers over the nanny. Check out this pathetic editorial from March 3:
Victoria Vannerom is the poster girl for immigration reform.
Vannerom, 32, a native of Belgium, was nanny to the twin sons of a Hingham couple until her arrest and detention in January by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Today she awaits deportation at the Suffolk County House of Correction.
She isn’t a terrorist, a threat to society or even a drain on our society. She held a job and paid taxes. Her only “crime” was overstaying a student visa. Sure, that was wrong. And it’s certainly not fair to the thousands of would-be immigrants patiently waiting their turn to enter the country and become citizens – through the proper channels.
But Vannerom and the family she worked for are also proof of our own dirty little secret – that the economy of this region and certainly other sections of the country are dependent on immigrants, legal and illegal. They help raise our children and clean our homes, but they also help staff our nursing homes, pick our crops, and provide the seasonal labor that fuels our tourism industry.
As Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said yesterday as the committee began work on an immigration bill, it’s time to bring those estimated 11 million illegals “out of the shadows.”
A bill crafted by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) provides the best balance of strong immigration enforcment [sic] and a practical track toward citizenship for illegals already working here.
It’s a problem that can’t wait any longer for a solution. Just ask that nice young Belgian nanny sitting in a Suffolk County cell.
Why is it at all necessary, or desirable, to have “strong immigration enforcment” if we’re so “dependent” on immigrant labor? Why is it so important to keep millions of wannabe immigrants out if it’s no big deal to grant amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens that are already here? Why doesn’t the Herald say that the Kennedy-McCain bill will not only grant amnesty to millions of lawbreakers but also open America’s labor market to additional millions of foreigners?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: America is not dependent on immigrant labor. But if America is dependent on immigrant labor, how is it prudent to increase this dependency by increasing the number and share of immigrant workers?
And how the heck did a servant of the well-to-do become the “poster girl for immigration reform?” Better than this girl, I suppose (Bostonist has made a similar observation).
Finally, doesn’t the Vannerom case show, in fact, that the dependency is actually the other way around? You know…immigrants are dependent on America? It’s not like the the family that the nanny worked for is about to move to Belgium.
Update March 8:
The Boston Globe reports, in an article written by Mac Daniel rather than Yvonne Abraham – what’s up with that?):
Federal immigration officials yesterday announced the arrests of 30 undocumented immigrants, including 26 who allegedly failed to obey federal orders to leave the country.
The arrests, which occurred Monday morning, were part of a coordinated sweep through Revere, Malden, Chelsea, Everett, and East Boston, officials said. None of those arrested were found to have ties to terrorism. Some of those arrested have been running from the law for 15 years, officials said.
Our old buddy Ali Noorani’s predictable, hilarious and quite frankly delusional reaction:
”There’s some validity that they’re out of status and they have not obeyed orders.”
Yeah, just a teeny weeny bit of validity.
