Very busy this morning. Two of my classes turn in papers this week, and I’ve been giving midterms in the other five. By this afternoon, I will have (by my best estimate) 335 exams or essays to grade — and all must be graded within the next two weeks.
A quick note: I was very disappointed that a senate filibuster yesterday blocked the “Dream Act.”
The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bill offering the children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they serve in the military or complete two years of higher education. The defeat of the measure, which had attracted bipartisan support, underscored the difficulty of enacting even a narrowly tailored proposal in the polarizing atmosphere surrounding immigration reform.
Off the top of my head, I can think of five or six current students of mine whom I know to be undocumented. I’ve had dozens of other students over the years whose parents came here illegally, often when their children were very small. These kids have grown up, worked hard, and are often finding it very difficult to continue their education. As undocumented students, they can’t apply for federal student grants or loan guarantees.
“Tammy” was my student in my women’s studies and humanities classes. She was the best student in the class each time; she was accepted to UCLA, planning to major in Women’s Studies and History. Her family had come to this country from the Philippines illegally, when Tammy was two. Tammy didn’t find out until her junior year of high school that she and her parents had no immigration documents. She found out her citizenship status when, returning home from her school’s “college day”, she told her parents that they would need to fill out the FAFSA (the standard federal student aid form.) Her parents sat her down and gently told her that that wouldn’t be possible. Tammy felt doubly betrayed: by her parents for never telling her that she had no legal status, and by the only society she has ever known. (Tammy speaks halting Tagolog, and flawless English. Because of passport issues, she has never been back to the land of her birth. Her home is Silverlake and Echo Park, not Manila.)
She was accepted to UCLA straight out of high school, but without financial aid, came to PCC.
Somehow, by borrowing money from family and friends, working two jobs, Tammy is making it happen at UCLA, and will graduate more or less on time. She’s got the raw talent and determination to succeed in the face of any obstacle. Others lack her extraordinary resolve, and slip through the cracks, moving into permanent lives in the shadow economy. I’ve seen it happen.
It ought to be a basic moral principle that children shouldn’t be punished for their parents’ crimes. I’m not sure I regard illicit immigration as a crime, but if I could be convinced that it was, it’s a crime for which the punishment ought only to come to bear on those who were adults at the time it was originally committed. The Dream Act, with its insistence on scholarship or service as conditions for naturalization, was a thoughtful, reasonable, and humane step in the right direction. And it’s been blocked.
I agree with President Bush about very little. But I think he’s been right on immigration more often than not, and I’m sorry that the far-right flank of his party has consistently blocked his efforts at modest immigration reform. (John McCain has also been relatively reasonable on the issue, but most of his fellow GOP candidates have not.) The defeat of the Dream Act is only temporary, I’m hopeful; if things go the way they might in the elections next fall, filibusters may largely become a thing of the past… but for now, the walls that block so many of my students remain in place.
My wife is an immigration lawyer, and she’s told me about many cases like Tammy’s. They’re among the most heartbreaking and obviously unjust, since they constitute “sending an immigrant back to their own country” only in the most narrow, legalistic sense.
It ought to be a basic moral principle that children shouldn’t be punished for their parents’ crimes.
She is not being punished for the crime - she is a victim of it.
Heartbreaking.
It’s election year in Mississippi, and a commercial just came out blasting the (Republican!) incumbent for not being “tough enough” on undocumented Mexican immigrants. For a brief moment, the camera panned over a Latino worker in a local poultry factory as ominous music played.
And I recognized the guy.
Did I meet him while volunteering at the Hispanic Ministries program of the local Episcopal diocese? While shopping at the grocery store? I don’t know. But I know he has a wife and kids.
I didn’t expect the DREAM Act to go anywhere in this Congress, but maybe in 2009 we can get some humane immigration reform passed. The DREAM Act would be item #1 on that agenda, from where I sit.
They’re not. They’re just not being rewarded for it, as they would be if the Nightmare Act had become law. No one seriously contends that the benefits in question ought to be extended to non-citizens who remain in their own countries; the only question is to whether to give them benefits they otherwise would not receive, solely because they’ve chosen to intrude upon ours.
It is a crime. Reasonable minds may differ as to whether it should be a crime, but there’s not much room for debate as to whether or not it is.
Does that “basic moral principle” apply to all crimes, or only to this one? If only this one, what makes this crime so different from the rest, and does the answer change if the parents also committed the crime of child endangerment by entrusting their kid to a ruthless “coyote” along the way? And if the principle applies to crimes generally, how on earth can we as a society justify punishing any criminal for any crime, however heinous, so long as he has kids who would be adversely affected?
I have a friend who got a citation for possession of a small amount of cannabis. As a result, she had her financial aid for college pulled because under federal law you can not get financial aid if you have any drug conviction, no matter how trivial.
I have another friend who had his financial aid for college pulled because he refused to sign up for Selective Service. Even though there is no draft, young men are required to register for the draft. He refused to sign up on grounds of principle. Now he can not go to college.
Can someone please explain why there is no similar Dream Act for these people? Both are American citizens. Does that make them less than people who entered the country illegally?
Sertorius, the difference is that your friends made a choice. How does a three year-old brought illegally to this country by their PARENTS make a choice? What is the child supposed to do, having never lived anywhere outside the USA, utterly ignorant of the customs of their ancestral homeland?
Hugo,:
1) My point was to ask why there is more concern in the legislature about illegal/undocumented folks than there is about American citizens whose rights are being taken away from them. It’s not simply this issue, but the bigger picture of the PATRIOT ACT, drug war, prison-industrial complex.
2) For that matter, why is there little campus concern about students who are being deprived of financial aid by federal policies against draft refusers and drug users? This is another example of the feds denying due process, and inflicting double jeopardy. Yet this goes by without hardly a cluck of protest from the campus. I’m one of the few people I know who has actively protested this (and I long since graduated college, and I’d refuse financial aid if offered for more reasons than I would tell you).
If the feds came out and denied financial aid to people who had, in the past, been convicted of illegal homosexual acts, I think we’d see some justifiable protest. Or are there groups in this country whose rights may be taken from them without any notice?
3) By the way, I’d say that anyone who does a tour of duty with the military ought to get citizenship. The Romans had a similar system and it worked for centuries. But this is a matter of earning a privilege, not having it handed to you.
Why are people who support illegal immigration always trying to get citizenship for people who’ve broken the law to come to this country? I could see granting legal residency to someone like Tammy, but why citizenship?