It looks to me as if the Immigration and Naturalization Service is kicking the dog in its zealous preoccupation with Jim Salmon. 
  It’s been a burlesque staple for generations. The man of the house, after a frustrating day at the office taking abuse he can’t effectively combat, comes home and takes it out on the dog. 
  The IRS has long been noted for doing that. Instead of taking on powerful companies and individuals, cases that take a lot of work and are difficult to win, agents find it easier to extract blood from softer turnips. 
  The war on drugs, just as prohibition of alcohol was earlier in this century, creates high levels of frustration among those given the impossible task of keeping drugs out of the country while a substantial segment of our population demands them. Drug bigshots are hard to catch and hard to convict, so the DEA kicks the dog. It catches the relatively powerless dealers at the bottom of the chain and imprisons them for life. 
  Our government, frustrated by its inability to get rid of the dictator of Iraq, takes it out on the helpless people of Iraq instead, denying them food and medical supplies through UN sanctions. We can’t kick Saddam Hussein, so we kick the dog. 
  So it may be with the INS. 
  Illegal immigration is a problem, and, as the number of refugees of all sorts climbs to record high levels every year, trying to stop people from coming into this land of milk and honey becomes more difficult and, no doubt, more frustrating for individual agents and for the agency itself. 
  Jim Salmon was easy to catch. He’s a good citizen with a fixed address in Sequim, not some slippery soul who slunk in over the border under a load of wood in a pickup truck. He is an asset to his family, our community, and this country. The INS wants to deport him because of a paperwork problem. What the heck, it’s easier than catching people who are trying to hide. 
  I met Jim and Bronwyn Salmon at the tail end of my garage sale two or three years ago. They’d auctioned off furniture in Australia and were replenishing their household on this side of the ocean at yard and garage sales. We liked them immediately, invited them in for coffee and were rewarded with their story of meeting, marrying, and coming to Sequim. 
  They weren’t hog-tied in red tape then, or, if they were, they didn’t yet know it. 
  In the course of applying for residency, the Salmon’s were yanked back and forth like a rag doll in a tug-of-war between two dogs. 
 One official says Jim can stay, another says he must leave, an attorney tells him to stay. He takes the lawyer’s advice and stays, his visa runs out, and the INS orders him out of the country for what could be ten years. 
  Bronwyn can’t go with him without jeopardizing her own tightrope walk to citizenship. While Jim is in trouble for not leaving every six months, Bronwyn is in trouble because the INS says she visited Australia for longer than six months. 
  Then, too, her son can’t leave the country because he may be called as a witness in a trial, and Bronwyn isn’t about to leave him alone in that situation. 
  Jim may be able to stay, but there are many hoops to jump through, many tedious procedures involving extensions and acts of Congress. Letters and calls to Rep. Norm Dicks and Sen. Slade Gorton might simplify matters. 
  Or Jim can abandon his wife, go back to Australia, and wait for her to become a citizen in a couple of years. Then she could apply for a green card for him. 
  It’s hard to see how the INS has the time and energy to devote to making life difficult for one family that is guilty, at most, of screwing up the paperwork. 
  You’d think the INS would have plenty of real work to do. You’d think they would better spend time and energy keeping bad guys and ne’er-do-wells out of the country. 
  But, when you can’t do anything about the real problem, you can always kick the dog.