One of my young friends who would benefit from the provisions of the recently defeated DREAM Act is pictured here to the left in a photo taken several years ago when she was about 10-years-old. She is the smiling face in the middle of this "huddle" of joy.
This photo captures a moment in a day of summer camp or, possibly, a shot from one of our after-school activities with children from our community.
She came here when she was 5-years-old when her parents moved to Dallas from Mexico. They were undocumented. They came to work. She is undocumented.
She is now a high school graduate. She is now a college student. She is today what she has always been: a delightful, smart, honest, wonderful person.
Opponents of the DREAM Act bluster about border security, abiding by the law, not "jumping ahead in line" that is the immigration process.
I guess almost all of us are for all of those things. What complicates this issue are facts like these:
1) The American economy invited these immigrants to come here, to work for cheap wages, to benefit us all. Our government--that would be me and you--looked the other way, did not enforce the law at the workplace and the problem grew to its current scale. At the same time, the policy benefited everyone--employers and consumers who took advantage of cheap labor, larger profit margins and cheaper goods and services. Again, that would be all of us who benefited.
2) The child pictured above, my friend, had nothing to do with any of this. She simply accompanied her parents to the U. S. She played by the rules, as far as she knew them. She excelled. She is an asset to everyone who knows her and to countless who don't.
Pretending that we can turn back the clock, rectify all of the mistakes quickly and empty out over a million students by deporting them to Mexico is absurd. As Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said last week in Washington, the vast majority of these young people have no home to return to in Mexico.
Believe what you want about comprehensive immigration reform. But don't forget my young friend.
Look at her picture.
She is not a statistic.
She is a wonderful person.
We don't need to send her anywhere, except on to finish her education so that she can continue to make a valuable contribution to our nation.
Sending her back to Mexico would be about like sending my two daughters back to Scotland.
8 comments:
I'm reading Hope Dies Last by Studs Terkel. Here is a quote from the book that people like Mr. Cornyn could ponder:
“I’m working toward a world in which it would be easier for people to behave decently.”
(Kathy Kelly and her Voices in the Wilderness project. She is a direct descendant of Dorothy Day. This is her response when asked why she was making so much trouble for the authorities).
Randy Mayeux,
Dallas
Larry,
In Scotland, at least, your daughters would still be functioning in their primary language--English (well, Scottish English, but still English). As you know, the primary language of many of the children born in Mexico that grew up here in the United States is English--and their Spanish is far weaker.
It's more like sending them to Italy--or China.
If the problem were "fixed" this time, would we have the same problen in another 10 years?
Anon 12:08 PM, Not if we were really willing to punish the real "criminals"--the employers who hire the workers for substandard wages to beneift the bottom line of the businesses in question and the cash register receipts of consumers like me. Tighten border security, develop a guest worker documentation program and punish those who hire the undocumented. We are blaming the least guilty of all in this current situation and we are hurting the innocent children of these families.
Larry,
Amen brother.
How true.
I have added your blog to my favorites.
God bless your ministry in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Democrats who want amnesty just want future voters, it's easy to see through that.
I think it will snow in Puerto Rico before the Republicans go after employers.
Anon 1:42 PM--Fact: President Bush wanted reform that you would call amnesty. You think he is helping the Democrats now? How do non-citizens vote. Wake up and face the reality. Stop believing everything you hear on talk radio.
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