U.S. steals money from immigrant

Pedro Zapeta, living and working in this country illegally for the past 11 years, has managed to put together $59,000. That is an incredible amount of money to collect on a minimum wage salary of $5.50 an hour.

He has been working six days a week, often more than the eight hours a day we Americans consider a standard working day, with one goal in mind. That goal was to earn enough money to buy land, in his native Guatemala, and build a house for his mother and sisters to live in.

Most Americans would have given up on this dream a long time ago under these conditions and bitched and complained about the wages every step of the way.

You have to agree this is a hard working man dedicated to his dream. An individual that any business would be privileged to employ.

Once he felt he had enough money to realize his dream he quit his jobs, stuffed his hard earned cash into a duffel bag and went to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and into the jaws of American bureaucracy.

It is understandable that airport security would, upon seeing this much cash in a duffel bag, think this is a drug runner. Albeit a very foolish drug runner for allowing cash to be so easily spotted. I’ll bet they got ‘real excited’ about busting an international drug ring and not allowing such a brazen criminal as this to sneak through ‘their line’.

Once Pedro showed them his pay stub receipts to prove that he earned the money, did they let him keep it. No! They sent him to U.S. Customs so he could legally declare the money under federal guidelines.

Did U.S. Customs help him declare the money so he could go on his way. No! They confiscated it for themselves! His attempts to explain his intentions fell on the deaf ears of a bunch of hard-nosed bureaucrats who obviously thought it best to take the adversarial role of believing he was a hardened criminal trying to pull something over on them. Instead of considering that he was telling the truth and simply giving him the proper form to fill out so he could keep his money and go on his way they decided to be criminals themselves. He has the proof that he earned that money and the U.S. government certainly does not need it.

Apparently, according the manner in which U.S. Customs handled this situation, if you are an illegal immigrant and you don’t speak English and you don’t understand America’s laws then you are an easy source of income for them.

U.S. Customs inspectors see their share of smuggling activity and they know all of the little tricks that smugglers use to sneak money past their scrutiny. Pedro Zapeta did not try to sneak this money past them nor did he try to deceive those inspectors in any way. Those inspectors know in their gut that Pedro Zapeta is not a drug smuggler. They know he simply did not understand that this money must be declared and they took advantage of him. They threw him into the teeth of the American legal system with a callousness that only a cold-hearted bureaucrat could muster. They should feel shame for their lack of compassion and for maintaining such a hardened stance toward this uneducated immigrant.

His own words sums this up: "They are treating me like a criminal when all I am is a working man," he said.

This is theft, pure and simple and the federal government found a way to get uglier still.

American citizens, upon learning of Pedro’s plight, donated $10,000, which sits in a trust in his name.

Federal prosecutors, the very people who should be trying to return the stolen money to him, instead offered him an underhanded, highly inadequate deal. In a typically underwhelming moment of ‘generosity’ they will ‘allow’ him to keep only $10,000 of his hard earned money and only $9,000 of the $10,000 that was donated in his name. They offered this with two stipulations, that he leave the country immediately and not talk publicly about what happened. Shame is running amok in the federal government! The audacity of these people knows no boundaries.

Ladies and gentlemen of the United States this is your federal government representatives at work, behind closed doors. They think it is okay to first tax his measly minimum wage income, then take that hard earned income from him because he did not know he had to fill some one page form and then use lawyers to kick him out of the country with only a small portion of it as long as he doesn’t tell the public about it.

This sounds like the behavior of backroom crime bosses.

Now an immigration court judge told him he has to leave the country by the end of January 2008.

Zapata’s response to all of this "I am desperate. I no longer feel good about this country."

The thing that all illegals need to learn from this is to send your money back home as soon as you earn it or the federal government will take it all from you.

Once again our government representatives have shown the world how petty and ugly they can be.

Way to go federal government for representing us so poorly and making yet another enemy of this country. Once again you shame us all with your uncaring, nonchalant treatment of the poor, uneducated, illegal immigrant.

CNN reported this story by saying some ‘mistake’ had been made. I did not read anything in this story that could be considered a ‘mistake’. I saw only wanton greed by an ever increasingly heartless government that doesn’t give a damn about the rights of a poor hard working man trying to make a living.

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for Pedro Zapeta to believe in the hype that he can come to America and earn his own way if he works hard enough?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for Pedro Zapeta to believe that once he earned his money that our federal government would not find it fitting that they should take it all away from him?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ that Pedro Zapeta did not try to hide the money better from security at that airport?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for U.S. Customs officials to assume Pedro Zapeta was a criminal?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for U.S. Customs officials to not give Pedro the necessary form to allow him to keep his money and therefore actually believe his story along with the proof that Pedro was not lying to them?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for the federal prosecutors to offer to pay Pedro off to keep him quiet about their crime?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for Pedro not to accept that obvious bribe?

Does CNN think it was a ‘mistake’ for Pedro, who knows the money is rightfully his, to stay and try to fight for it as any red-blooded American would do?

This is an awful lot of questions raised by a story from the most ‘trusted’ name in news.

Yet another question: don’t you think CNN should have worded the title of this story more truthfully, such as ‘U.S. government once again screws over the working man’?

All of these federal people work for us and I say give that money back to him and allow him to go home and fulfill his dreams. He worked hard for it and should not be punished because the U.S. government did not deport him before he was able to earn that much money.