the anonymous senator

Today I found out that a good friend of mine, whom I have I known since we were 12, is secretly an illegal alien. When he was a boy his family came to this country and took on a fake identity.

This is not an everyday sort of conversation. To tell the truth, it's hard for me to accept.

The only reason he is telling people now is that the government found out about it when he was completing his military service. That's right, my friend was a military officer. The military didn't enjoy learning that they had sent a non-citizen through the academy, even if he has served them proudly and capably for a decade. So he is calling his friends to tell them he has a deportation hearing in couple weeks. I'm keeping this whole thing rather vague out of respect for his privacy, but after the hearing I imagine it'll be out in the open.

I know it sounds corny, but for me the American ideal is defined by open opportunity for it's immigrants more than by anything else. That IS America. So an early Happy Fourth of July to you. I'm hoping that reason prevails and he is allowed to stay.

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As a follow up, my friend got assigned an individual hearing due to the complexity of the case. The hearing is scheduled for April 15, 2010. They're stretching the "speedy" provision of the Sixth Amendment pretty thin on that one.

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Monday night, out at a bar with some friends, I told the story of how my father sat next to Mark Hamill on a business flight sometime in 1977 or 1978. I told this story because @TimothyHuang was showing us a picture on his Blackberry of himself with Mark Hamill. Of course, my dad had no idea who he was until they made polite conversation about they did for a living. Mark did autographs for my brother and I - we were about 9 and 3 at the time.

It turns out that two of these friends, @gooddirt and @TimothyHuang, who had never met before Monday night, lived in the same small rural town in Taiwan when they were very young. And they both happen to be my age. So while dad was chatting with Luke Skywalker at 35,000 feet, those two might have been toddling down the same street in Taiwan. It's a small world, after all, especially in New York.

PS - I always thought my brother's autograph was way cooler - "May the force be with - Micheal."

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