Article about illegals' children in Guardian

[cadma]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our-parents-were-russian-spies-tim-alex-foley


Potentially relevant to people's interests? "The Americans" is mentioned about two-thirds of the way down.

Comments

[jae]

Thank you for posting this! I was just about to.

Would you mind editing this to give it a subject line?

-J

[wendelah1]

Yes. Thank you for posting it.

[theplatonicnonyeah]

LOL! I just tweeted that at the Jays!
Oddly enough, it was a friend on FB who is not a fan of the show, as far as I know, that posted about it. :-)

[jae]

And now we've got the International Business Times speculating on the end of the show based on the facts of this case. Hmmm.

-J

[saraqael]

Great article! Did you tweet it to the J's? Bet they'd like to read it.

[treonb]

Fascinating article, thanks for posting!

Those kids were much older than Paige and Henry, but it's interesting that they did not hesitate and got on a plane to Russia. Also, they claim they had the most normal upbringing and never suspected anything, despite the fact that they knew they had grandparents, but somehow never spoke to them.

[jesse_the_k]

I found it astounding that Alex, at fifteen, decided to remain as uninformed as possible about his parents' activities. Pretty sophisticated awareness of trial procedure. Then again the family may have had in-depth discussion over their dinners in Singapore and Paris.

[treonb]

Given their behavior, it makes sense both kids knew.

Also the fact that the FBI had them under surveillance for a decade, and apparently they taped them offering their son to join them. The journalist takes his denial at face value, though it seems like a bunch of rhetorical questions to me.

But it's interesting, because with all the 'running water' conversations we've had, P&E didn't take any precautions when confessing to Paige about being Russian.

grandparents

[theplatonicnonyeah]

Well, speaking from experience it is quite possible to be aware of existing grandparents and yet never meet them.

Re: grandparents

[treonb]

True. But they traveled all over the world, it's just Canada that was too far away. They didn't meet them and didn't talk to them, in the internet age. It's possible, I guess, if the parents made up some story about not talking to their parents.

Paige supposedly felt her family wasn't normal because of things like that (though I did think she was overly suspicious).

Re: grandparents

[sistermagpie]

Didn't they say they did meet them, but somehow before they were old enough to twig to the fact that they didn't speak English?

Re: grandparents

[treonb]

Yes. Which is what makes this stranger, for me.

You meet your grandparents in Europe, you know/think they live in Canada, you travel all over the world, but you never stop to say hi. So all you get are pictures every now and then. By snail mail? Did their parents ever talk to them on the phone? I'm just wondering how it all worked.

Re: grandparents

[theplatonicnonyeah]

No, but this isn't strange to someone like me, who had grandparents living in another country (my mother's origin). I didn't speak the same language, unfortunately, so we never had any real contact. (Although, my mother did, of course.)

And also, if you're estranged from your parents for some reason they will never be a part of your children's lives either.

Losing contact with an older generation isn't that unusual or strange, if you move countries. Plus, you have to remember that children usually believe whatever lies their parents will tell them for whatever reason...

And on a personal note, my child has never met his grandfather (my dad), who is alive and live in the same city as us, because he just isn't interested in meeting with his grandchild. So there are a million possible reasons.

Re: grandparents

[sistermagpie]

It's not strange, I agree. (I always thought Paige was odd for her insistence that everyone had extended family. There's plenty of people who know no one beyond even a single parent--Philip might not even have any family.) But I don't know what their story was supposed to be. The parents were in Canada and spoke French and English. Where did they think their grandparents were from, since they spoke English and French themselves?

But if I'm remembering it wrong it's a moot point anyway. I had just thought that they talked about meeting their grandparents rather than only getting things from them.

ETA: It occurs to me that it's funny--over the years we've gotten info about Elizabeth's family, that she has a mother, father who died, an uncle. This season started with the unusual flashback to Philip--but yet again it avoided telling us about his origins, family etc. Then we got another flashback to Elizabeth this season and we got another bit of info, that she has cousins. So we just keep getting more foundation for Elizabeth and Philip seems more isolated than ever.

Re: grandparents

[treonb]

I also had a somewhat similar experience with my grandparents and I agree that there are many people out there who don't have a relationship with their grandparents, for various reasons.

But at some point, doesn't the child ask where the grandparents are? Why don't we speak to them?

They could have said the grandparents were dead and stopped the questions, but here there's actual contact.

At Christmas, the boys would receive gifts marked “from grandparents”. Their parents told them they lived in Alberta, far from Toronto, which was why they never saw them. Occasionally, new photographs would arrive of the grandparents against a snowy backdrop; it helped that the climates of Alberta and Siberia are not so different.

The grandparents sent them gifts but never wrote a personal word? They sent photos but never called? Maybe the parents came up with a good reason for all of this, but it sounds weird.

What kind of presents did they get? Was it really from Russia or did somebody buy them stuff in Canada? Did they write thank you notes, and did they ever receive a reply? What did their friends think of all this? Didn't they have questions?

Last season I actually argued that Paige was over-suspicious, and that, as you say, children usually believe what their parents tell them. At the time I thought I was in the minority.

Re: grandparents

[sistermagpie]

It was especially weird with Paige because she was apparently told that her grandparents were all dead so what's the mystery? They were only children, their grandparents were only children or they didn't keep in touch with their other relatives. It's not even like her parents were allegedly living in a small town where the family had lived for generations and never left. They could have moved around anywhere.

Re: grandparents

[theplatonicnonyeah]

Going back to my own experience with my father, my child has asked about him and why we never meet him and I've replied as honestly as I've could, of course. But I could just as well have served up some more socially acceptable lie, similar to something I suspect a spy or someone else who needs to conceal something would do.

Children do tend to trust their parents, although the older they get the more they will question you. Paige is perhaps meant to be a more precocious child than most? She is very moral and dislikes untruth. So it does make sense that she doesn't quite trust her parents. But it is a difficult character to write realistically.

Paige

[treonb]

She is very moral and dislikes untruth.

I didn't think about this in this last ep, where she is forced to lie to Tim & Alice. She talks about not feeling up to it, and not being able to do a good job, but she doesn't talk about the difficulty of lying.

[saraqael]

I had grandparents that I never spoke to after age 6, so that part of their story didn't seem unusual to me.

[sistermagpie]

Interesting that elsewhere there was a discussion on the kids on the show's citizenship status and a person argued for exactly this grey area. Other people were saying that was stupid and crazy, but it does make sense from a legal standpoint.

Of course, during the Cold War the US (or now) the US I think would have good reason to keep the kids just for the publicity value.

[jae]

Luckily for them, Canada's new prime minister is someone who just looooooooves making a BIG SHOW out of GRAND GESTURES that have to do with doing something because it's the RIGHT THING TO DO. ;)

-J

[sugangel7.livejournal.com]

this is fascinating! great read! thanks for sharing. I'm kind of with others on the fact that the kids had absolutely no suspicions but then again it's easy to just fit anything that might seem peculiar into some kind of easy explanatory frame of reference.