The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Saad Nabeel and I am writing to you from Bangladesh. Prior to my arrival in this nation, I lived in the United States for 15 years. My parents brought me to America at age three. It is the only home I know. I used to attend the University of Texas at Arlington with a full scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Through no fault of my own I was forced to leave my home, friends, possessions, and most importantly, my education behind.
November 3rd 2009 is a day I will never forget. My mother called me and told me that my father had been detained by ICE and that we needed to leave immediately to Canada to seek refugee status. Being an only child, I had to take care of my mother and go with her.
My mother and I were denied entrance into Canada and sent back to the USA as if we were common criminals. I was separated from my mother and sent to a detention facility where I was forced to live with 60 men, many of whom were hardened criminals. There was no privacy and I was forced to use the facilities and showers while fully exposed. I lived in constant fear of being abused. I was without food for upwards of 14 hours a day and received little to no medical attention. When I asked for legal counsel I was threatened with criminal charges and jail time in a Federal Penitentiary. To this day I still have nightmares about being detained. Everything my parents taught me about human decency was replaced with humiliation. Mr. President I hope you are as outraged as I am hurt by this ordeal.
Bangladesh is extremely hot and humid. We have no air conditioning as the power goes out every day. These power outages can last twelve hours or more. The air is heavily polluted and I get food poisoning every week from the poor quality of food here. Raw sewage flows in open drains in front of our apartment. I see people outside with mangled bodies dying on the street because of the heat and starvation. I see mothers practically giving their children away because they are unable to feed them.
I do not know the language and I fear going outside because I am different from everyone else. Speaking in English is an easy way to be targeted here. We cannot afford to live in a safer area. I have not left the apartment for 8 months. It simply is too dangerous for me to leave the apartment unless my parents go with me. I cannot attend school due to the language barrier. I do not know anyone in Bangladesh.
On top of all this, my parents are both ill and have been for months. My father suffers severe asthma attacks that make him bedridden on most days. My mother has post traumatic stress and cannot accept the fact that she is not at our home in Texas.
These events transpired after we were approved to receive our Green Cards. ICE forced my family to leave knowing that Green Cards were available to us. We have been waiting for our Green Cards for 15 years now.
Mr. President, you are the most powerful man in the world, all I ask from you is to bring me home. All I ever wanted was an education so I could become an engineer. I just want to go home and go back to college. Please don’t keep me exiled any longer. Please bring me home.
Sincerely, Saad Nabeel
The “DREAM Now” letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America’s Voice. Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap.
Approximately 65,000 undocumented youth graduate from U.S. high schools every year, who could benefit from passage of the DREAM Act. Many undocumented youth are brought to the United States before they can even remember much else, and some don’t even realize their undocumented status until they have to get a driver’s license, want to join the military, or apply to college. DREAM Act youth are American in every sense of the word — except on paper. It’s been nearly a decade since the DREAM Act was first introduced. If Congress does not act now, another generation of promising young graduates will be relegated to the shadows and blocked from giving back fully to our great nation.
This is what you can do right now to pass the DREAM Act:
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Maricopa County Community College District on Monday, accusing it of discrimination for requiring extra paperwork from new employees who were not U.S. citizens.
The suit claims that at least 247 newly hired employees who were not citizens were required to present additional work-authorization documents beyond those required by law between July 2008 and January 2010.
The district, which did not require the extra documents from U.S. citizens, stopped the practice in January, during a Justice Department investigation.
The Immigration and Nationality Act requires employers to treat authorized workers in the same manner as U.S. citizens, according to Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division.
The suit says that Glendale Community College offered a part-time math teaching position to Zainul Singaporewalla in August 2008. He accepted and produced a Department of Homeland Security form proving his permanent legal status as well as a California driver’s license and Social Security card.The college then asked Singaporewalla to fill out a non-U.S. citizen employee tax data form, and to provide a permanent resident card, which staff told him was a federal requirement. When he questioned the validity of the request and was unable to produce the card, the job offer was rescinded.
The suit, filed after a yearlong investigation by the Justice Department, calls for the community college district to pay a penalty of $1,100 for each non-U.S. citizen who was authorized to work but was required to supply additional documentation.
Tom Gariepy, spokesman for the community colleges, said Monday the district would have no comment on the suit.
Singaporewalla could not be reached for comment. He is listed on the faculty of the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin.
Two separate, but intertwining trends — the intense political activism of country’s nearly 50 million Latinos and the historic fight to keep the internet as it is: free, flat and open-are fundamentally altering the meaning of freedom in the United States.
This intimate link between the internet future and the Latino future is inspiring the rapidly increasing numbers of Latinos who are joining the David-like struggle to defend us all against the serious threat to our rights posed by the fee-based, hierarchical and closed internet envisioned by corporate Goliaths like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
Dynamic new groups like Latinos for Internet Freedom, an online advocacy coalition of more than 40 local and national groups, recognize that, on the internet, making consumers pay additional money for what currently costs nothing is robbery plain and simple; Latinos understand that creating new hierarchies of faster and slower websites means a new variation on the ancient theme of discrimination; We’re clear that, in a world where personal, professional and political success depends on rapid and open communication systems, slowness is death. In this sense Latinos organizing to keep the internet free from corporate control are helping shape the contours of all of our futures.
In much the same way that access to education and property and control of railroad tracks separated the haves from the have-nots in the industrial age, changing access to -and control of- the internet threatens to empower today’s haves to discriminate even further against the have-nots of the digital age. Preventing such discrimination and saving the internet-and the rights it enables- is what network neutrality, the set of principles and laws that keep the internet free, flat and open, is all about.
Network neutrality protects the small businessperson from competing with Big Businesses able to afford the higher speeds of the closed internet, the same closed internet that more than 550 Big Telecom lobbyists last year told your Congress member we all need; Network neutrality allows a Latina blogger to exercise her freedom of speech as fluidly, as quickly and as freely (i.e.; nobody, including internet service providers, can censor websites) as the big media organizations do; Network neutrality guarantees that we can all look for jobs and educational opportunities at the same speed and at the same low price: free. Like the railroad robber barons of the 19th century, the digital robber barons of the 21rst century know that the road to even more fabulous power and profits is paved by control of access to the digital tracks and lines that connect us all.
Groups like the Center for Media Justice and Latinos for Internet Freedom are fighting with the same ferocious conviction that defined the rights struggles of previous eras. They fight because they represent the interests of Latinos, African Americans, poor people and other groups, because they sense that we are again at another epoch-defining political and economic moment; They fight because they know that whoever controls the internet will define whether some communities will be left of on the right or wrong side of the tracks of history.
Consider, for example, how the ability of Latinos to use social networking sites, blogs and other media to organize the most massive simultaneous marches in US history, as they did so spectacularly in 2006, will be impossible without the free and fast access made possible by network neutrality or what some are calling “Internet Freedom.” Organizations like Presente.org, which I am a founding member of, would not have been able to stop big media-sponsored bigots like Lou Dobbs from promoting anti-Latino, anti-immigrant hate groups on national television; The multiple and powerful campaigns against SB-1070, Arizona’s dangerous racial profiling law, depends fundamentally on the freedom and openness protected by network neutrality. The struggles of the present and foreseeable future will take place in a political environment mediated by media systems we must all protect at all costs. The term “network neutrality” may feel geeky and uninspiring on its surface, but the reality behind the term is extremely, urgently important in its potential for advancing freedom -and unfreedom.
For these and other reasons, Latino freedom depends on Internet freedom; Internet freedom depends on the engagement and activism of Latinos, and of all of us. Such a historic blending of our political destiny and the technological future has always defined the borders of democracy, as happened during the age of the underground railroad and the civil rights struggle that followed the Plessy - Ferguson decision, which upheld the principle and fact of a “separate but equal” railroad system. As in previous eras, corporations hungry to profit from the creation of a separate but equal system, a separate but equal internet.
Castigated, reviled and attacked for alleged non-citizenship as much as any group, Latinos have no choice but to march with our feet in the streets, and with our fingers online. Our struggles mirror how we are all coming of political age in the time of networks like the Internet. If and how much we fight to protect these networks will, in no small part, determine if the word “freedom” is to mean anything.
The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain’s office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation.
I came to this country when I was fourteen-years-old from Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the late nineties and Mexico was, and is still, facing one of the worst socio-economic and political periods in recent history. For my parents - a taxi driver and a stay-at-home-mom that were struggling to make ends meet- it was clear that they would have to choose between seeing their children starve and get sick, or risk it all, leave everything behind and relocate the family to Southern California with hopes of a better future. In 1998 we moved to Los Angeles and have lived here, since.
Their choice and sacrifice paid-off. I didn’t only become the first one in my family to graduate from high school, but a couple of years ago I became the first one in my family to graduate from college. I graduated from California State University, Northridge and I am currently in the process of applying to law school. My dream is to become an attorney and defend the most vulnerable in the courts of law.
Life as an undocumented student has not been easy, it’s been filled with tough choices and a lot of uncertainty. At one point I felt like the only way to fulfill my dream of higher education was to leave my family behind and go back to Mexico. But California had become my home and so I chose to stay despite the uncertain future ahead. Against all odds I enrolled in college, and it was there that I first learned about the DREAM Act. From the moment I heard about this piece of legislation I decided to work hard and advocate for its passage. It’s now been seven years since that day and the DREAM Act has yet to become a reality.
Despite overwhelming support, Congress has been unwilling to pass the DREAM Act. It is because of that inaction that earlier this year I had to decide whether committing civil disobedience would be worth the risk of being forcibly separated from my family, and deported to a place I no longer consider home. I made a choice, forced in part by the lack of courage from our leaders in Congress and inspired by your call to change, the “change [that] will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.” Just as I had chosen to work on your campaign inspired by what you said, that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek,” I also chose to face my fears, to risk it all, to seek that change, and sit-in so that the DREAM Act could stand alone.
Some say that destiny is not a matter of chances but one of choices. My life and that of my fellow Dreamers has been filled with tough choices, some made by us and some made by others on our behalf. Two months after five of us chose to risk it all for our futures, because we knew that without the DREAM Act we had no future, twenty-one others chose to risk it all for a dream that belongs to us as much as it belongs to our families, our communities, and our home - the United States of America.
I firmly believe that we have made the right choice - to stand up for what we believe in and to try to fulfill the promise of the great American Dream that brought us here in the first place. I firmly believe that we, the undocumented youth, are standing on the right side of history. Now I ask that you stand with us by making the right choice. Help us pass the DREAM Act immediately. Help us free our DREAMs, which have for too long been held hostage to political rhetoric and insensitive choices by a few that have yet to recognize the potential that we have as young, educated people.
Mr. President, staying strong and facing my challenges with courage and dignity while I wait patiently is no longer an option, it’s no longer a choice I can make because I played the last card I had, and my time is running out. I put my life on the line in order to have a chance at a future out of the shadows. Now the DREAM Act is the only chance I have to stay home. Please help us pass the DREAM Act so that no more youth have to risk it all by putting their lives on the line.
Sincerely, Lizbeth Mateo
The “DREAM Now” letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America’s Voice. Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap.
Approximately 65,000 undocumented youth graduate from U.S. high schools every year, who could benefit from passage of the DREAM Act. Many undocumented youth are brought to the United States before they can even remember much else, and some don’t even realize their undocumented status until they have to get a driver’s license, want to join the military, or apply to college. DREAM Act youth are American in every sense of the word — except on paper. It’s been nearly a decade since the DREAM Act was first introduced. If Congress does not act now, another generation of promising young graduates will be relegated to the shadows and blocked from giving back fully to our great nation.
This is what you can do right now to pass the DREAM Act:
The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
On July 20th, 2010 I was arrested in the office of Senator John McCain fighting for the DREAM Act.
I am one of the thousands of students who would qualify for this legislation. I was brought to the United States at the age of four and have been here ever since. I consider myself to be a good student and I always strive to be a good example for others. I have been waiting for the DREAM Act to pass since it was first introduced in 2001, and this year I decided that I couldn’t stand by and wait another year. I decided to fight for my DREAMs.
I can no longer watch as politicians gamble with my future and the futures of my friends, family, and even strangers who are in the same position as I am. This is why I, along with 20 other DREAMers decided to take action and fight for what we believe is right; thus, we decided to conduct sit-ins at various senators offices and urge them to take action on the DREAM Act. We can not stand by as another class of outstanding students graduate without being able to fulfill their DREAMs.
I have been taught that America is the land of opportunity yet I have been denied the opportunity to contribute back to society and continue with my education. I put my life on the line by participating in this action but I strongly believe it is worth it, because all I’m asking for is an opportunity to DREAM.
Because of the sit-in I have to return to Washington DC for my trial on October 1st, 2010. During the trial I will continue to fight for what I believe is right. I need to be able to make it back to DC for this date, however, I’m running out of funds. Please help me continue my fight so that I can make it back to DC for my trial on October first.
If I can’t make it by then I’ll have a warrant for my arrest and the risk of deportation will be higher. I don’t want to go back to a country that I don’t know. America is my home, the country I would fight for, the country I would die for. Please help me remain with my family and friends. Please help me stay home.
Thank you so much for your contribution,
Myrna Orozco
NOTE: You can help Myrna by donating here:
The “DREAM Now” letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America’s Voice. Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap.
Approximately 65,000 undocumented youth graduate from U.S. high schools every year, who could benefit from passage of the DREAM Act. Many undocumented youth are brought to the United States before they can even remember much else, and some don’t even realize their undocumented status until they have to get a driver’s license, want to join the military, or apply to college. DREAM Act youth are American in every sense of the word — except on paper. It’s been nearly a decade since the DREAM Act was first introduced. If Congress does not act now, another generation of promising young graduates will be relegated to the shadows and blocked from giving back fully to our great nation.
This is what you can do right now to pass the DREAM Act:
American Apparel, the risqué-advertised and hipster-chic clothing retailer, is struggling to lift itself out of the financial dumps. The company’s debt has risen to $120.3 million, up more than 33% since March. Share prices have plummeted to an all-time low of 66 cents after consecutive days of 20% or higher drops. It missed its recent 10-Q filing and received a letter from the NYSE that threatened their de-listing. But neither American Apparel’s financials nor nasty reports of sexist hiring practices are to blame, says founder and CEO Dov Charney and a company spokesperson.
The problem here is immigration reform.
In a weekly conference call today with international stores and corporate heads, the AA chief blamed a lack of immigration reform and media misunderstandings for the company’s woes. According to a source listening to the call, Charney disputed reports that the company is nearing bankruptcy and out of cash. Rather, he said, one of the core issues is AA’s employment troubles. “The real core issue is we lost 2,500 people,” Charney said, referring to what American Apparel attorney and spokesman Peter Schey calls a “routine” 18-month investigation and early 2010 immigration and customs enforcement action that resulted in the loss of workers, many of whom didn’t have proper immigration documents. (Schey tells Fast Company the number of employees shed after the enforcement action was more like 1,500.)
Charney, who’s long been as passionate about hiring immigrants at fair wages as he is about nubile hipster girls in boy briefs, told employees today that their replacements should have been trained sooner, but since they weren’t, production suffered and store inventory wasn’t being replenished. Our source characterized his mood about past and present presidential presidents’ immigration policies as “bitter.” It’s an explanation he’s used as far back as June of this year.
Spokesman Schey echoed that sentiment, faulting the Obama Administration for targeting a company that was paying its employees (none of whom the company knew were undocumented, Schey adds) living wages. “In my view it was a complete waste of time,” Schey says of the worker inspection. “By the way, those workers did not leave the United States,” when they were either fired or resigned, Schey tells Fast Company. “Those workers were literally pushed by the Obama Administration into the arms of sweatshop employers. I stayed in touch with many of them, and the next stop for them was at a sweatshop.”
Additionally Charney–and Schey–did acknowledge that retail sales were down, though many stores outside the United States are thriving, but Charney added that wholesale and online sales are up, and wholesale makes up at least half of the company.
Schey denies that recent reports about image requirements for AA employees have had an impact. “I’m definitely in the loop on all of that,” he says, adding later, “I think the notion that Gawker and a few of the blogs have pressed the idea that every new employee has to be photographed so Dov can personally approve them is absolute nonsense. He doesn’t have the time to do that, and he doesn’t have the interest in doing that. If he did, he would need a new pair of glasses.”
Schey adds, “All you’d have to do is walk into American Apparel stores, and you’d be hard pressed to find people who’d win any beauty contests.” Asked to clarify, he said, “How could I put that simply? You could walk into any American Apparel store and hopefully appreciate that people … that retail … what do you call them–salespeople are hired based upon their ability to sell the brand or their ability to identify with and sell the brand and certainly not based on their looks.”
Our source could not determine if at any point during Charney’s conference call today he pleasured himself.
The lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law aside, Obama has devoted nearly all his efforts on immigration to ramped up enforcement, and his administration is on track to deport a record number of illegal immigrants. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects the number of deportations to increase by 10 percent above Bush’s 2008 total — and 25 percent above the 2007 total. But this number would be far higher were it not for the record number of immigrants who remain in legal purgatory, as there’s an unprecedented backlog of deportation and asylum cases that have yet to be heard. The Center for Investigative Reporting explains:
There were nearly 248,000 cases pending by the middle of June this year, a whopping 33 percent higher than where the figure stood at the end of fiscal year 2008. … TRAC also found that the average length of time it’s taken to conclude immigration cases during 2010 reached 459 days, a number higher than any year since at least 1998. By state, California remains the leader in average wait times with more than 640 days. One hearing location in San Diego posted an extraordinary average wait time of nearly 1,300 days, or to put it another way, more than three years.
The massive backlog is partly the result of more aggressive enforcement, as the administration has moved swiftly to conduct audits of businesses that hire immigrants, expand programs like Secure Communities — which allows local law enforcement to target illegal immigrants with criminal records — and target illegal immigrants with alleged gang ties. And the number of immigration cases will continue piling up in the absence of a comprehensive immigration overhaul and a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants. Political gridlock has kept Congress from even debating such a bill, according to the Democratic leadership. The pressure to tackle immigration issues hasn’t let up, however, and the White House has decided that increased enforcement is the most feasible and politically palatable alternative in the meantime.
But that’s not all that’s behind the holdup. Obama’s Justice Department has also failed to fill an eyebrow-raising number of judicial vacancies in immigration courts. As of March, one out of every six positions remained unfilled, the Center for Investigative Reporting notes. At the time, the agency had promised to hire 47 judges by Sept. 30, but only five new immigration judges have been sworn in thus far. (The empty slots are also a reminder of the glaring number of judicial vacancies that have yet to be filled in the federal courts as well.)
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are stuck in limbo. Some are being held in detention centers, and others are being monitored at large. It’s a diverse group, on the whole: 27 percent of people in the backlog are from Mexico, 9 percent are from China, and Armenians have the longest wait time (938 days, on average). They and their families are all just waiting to hear whether they must stay or go. And both sides of the immigration debate would probably agree that the decision should come sooner than later.
The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Carlos and I’m a 23 year old undocumented immigrant from Caracas, Venezuela. I want to legalize my immigration status in this country through the passage of DREAM Act this year. For too long have I lived in the U.S. without papers. It has been over 20 years, now. I want to legalize my immigration status in order to fulfill my dreams of becoming a young professional in architecture.
There are obstacles in my daily life that make it extraordinarily difficult to pursue a career in architecture. Fortunately, because of my determination to continue my studies after graduating high school in 2005, I’m currently a student in Miami Dade College. It has not been without great difficulty. For many years it felt as if all the potential I developed in high school was for nothing.
I am the perfect example of other students in similar situations whose voices have been silenced by the fact that we are not truly accounted for. We are afraid of speaking up because doing so might affect our immigration status in this country and possibly even lead to deportation. I myself felt this way for several years, but after dealing with my status for so long, I now consider it a duty to speak up for myself and for other youth in my shoes.
I remember that dark and cold feeling of shame, fear and hopelessness.
After the death of my mother–the person I was closest to in my life–I’d constantly ask myself what is to come of me? Where is my life going? If it wasn’t for her strength and desire to see me succeed, I would not have devoted myself to this cause in her memory. If it wasn’t for her love–her incredible affection transcending my existence–I would not have been able to conquer the fear of being undocumented. My love of humanity has manifested itself through the fight for immigrant rights.
That’s why I was one of four undocumented youth that participated on a 1500 mile walk from Miami, FL to Washington D.C. known as the Trail of Dreams.
I encourage you to present this letter U.S. Congress, Mr. President, so that the voice of one undocumented immigrant echoes the voice of millions. I hope that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus can have the vision to push for the DREAM Act this year. It would be be a dream for so many families, fathers and mothers just like mine, to see their children on the path towards legalization and professional degrees.
I consider it a colossal loss for society that young Americans, such as myself, find it extremely difficult to continue our studies after high school graduation. We are unable to work legally, unable to join the Armed Forces, unable to legally obtain a driving license, and unable to apply or receive most scholarships. Economically supporting our families under these circumstances is impossible.
Our legalization would greatly contribute to our communities and make this country a better place. As young professionals we would open businesses, create jobs, pay taxes, and play a much stronger role rehabilitating the economy, just like any other hardworking U.S. citizen.
Please give us the opportunity to contribute to the only country we know as our home, Mr. President. Please step up and help us pass the DREAM Act, this year.
Sincerely, Carlos A. Roa, Jr.
The “DREAM Now” letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America’s Voice. Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap.
Approximately 65,000 undocumented youth graduate from U.S. high schools every year, who could benefit from passage of the DREAM Act. Many undocumented youth are brought to the United States before they can even remember much else, and some don’t even realize their undocumented status until they have to get a driver’s license, want to join the military, or apply to college. DREAM Act youth are American in every sense of the word — except on paper. It’s been nearly a decade since the DREAM Act was first introduced. If Congress does not act now, another generation of promising young graduates will be relegated to the shadows and blocked from giving back fully to our great nation.
This is what you can do right now to pass the DREAM Act:
When the police arrived at his father’s apartment, 1-year-old Christopher lay on the floor holding his 3-week-old brother. The boys were alone and covered in blood.
Christopher has vague memories of the event but says his mother and other relatives later described it to him in detail. He relies on memories and family stories as he recounts his early childhood.
Christopher was born in 1992 to a family of mixed immigration status. His father, a U.S. citizen, married his Mexican mother the year before his birth. Christopher says the relationship turned rocky because his father had a drug problem.
After the birth of her second son, Christopher’s mother decided to leave her troubled husband for the benefit of her children; but when the husband found out what she planned to do, he threatened to call the police. Christopher says his father threatened to tell them his wife was not really the mother of their sons and have her deported so she could never take the children away.
“My mom was not afraid of him,” Christopher said. “She said, ‘Call them, and you’ll see who your wife is.’”
His father wasn’t bluffing.
He called the police. His Spanish-speaking wife had little recourse, unable to understand the scene that was unfolding. She was deported to Sinaloa, Mexico shortly thereafter, her two U.S. citizen sons left in the care of their citizen father.
“She was going crazy, in Mexico without us,” Christopher said. “I was only 1 year and 7 months…my brother was just 3 weeks old.”
Christopher said when his mother’s best friend heard what had happened she went over to the apartment to talk to Christopher’s father, but instead she found the two boys alone and Christopher injured. It appeared that Christoper had climbed into his brother’s crib to comfort the crying boy. Lifting his brother out of the crib, he slipped, cutting his arm on the crib and falling to the floor.
“When they saw us like that, all covered in blood, everyone freaked out, wondering what was going on,” Christopher said. “When they found my father, he was passed out on the street, on drugs and drunk. So they gave my mother a permit to come and get us, to take us back to Mexico.”
[Repeated efforts to speak with Christopher's father for this story were unsuccessful.]
Christopher’s story is not unique. According to a new study conducted by the Urban Institute, a research organization that focuses on social and economic issues, there are 5.5 million children that are currently living in the United States with at least one undocumented parent. Close to 75 percent of the children are U.S. citizens. When one or both parents are deported the result can be years of struggle for the citizen children. They often have to choose between living with their immediate family — in another country — or living without them in the United States. And, now, some conservatives are pushing legislation seeking to strip citizenship from children with two undocumented parents, meaning they would have no choice of which country to live in. The children would be deported along with their parents.
In the years following 1996’s reforms to the Immigration and Nationality Act, efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants living illegally in the country have ramped up significantly. Workplace and residential raids have become a relatively common occurrence in some communities. This type of enforcement often leaves young citizens behind with little or no family support.
Margaret Acuitlapa and her family.
Margaret Acuitlapa faced a tough decision after her husband, an illegal immigrant, was deported. A U.S. citizen and mother of three, Acuitlapa had to decide whether to raise the children alone or uproot them and move to Mexico so they could be with their father. With her children’s education in mind, Acuitlapa stayed in the United States for a month after her husband’s deportation. However, she says the resulting emotional strain on the family proved overwhelming, and Acuitlapa decided to leave her home in Georgia to reunite her family in Mexico.
“The first year we were here, we were treated as strangers,” Acuitlapa said of her family’s arrival in Malinalco, a small town in southwestern Mexico. “Things were unpleasant for all of us.”
Acuitlapa’s family will have been living in the town three years as of this October — years she describes as very challenging.
“We have not been back home to visit once — and as you may have guessed, it is because of financial difficulties,” Acuitlapa said.
Acuitlapa says that when she lived in the United States, her parents depended on her for rides to their many doctor’s appointments. Her husband, Jose, would often help her father with strenuous jobs around the house, as he could no longer take care of everything on his own.
“They aren’t in good health. So they can’t even come visit us.” Acuitlapa said. “We don’t have the resources. I do feel trapped sometimes.”
Although she moved to keep her family together, the life they have faced in Mexico has put different strains on her marriage, and her children.
“Our kids didn’t speak any Spanish when we moved here. Even now, my 10-year-old daughter is reading at a second-grade level,” she said of the struggles her children have faced in school. “My 15-year-old son is still having a hard time with everything.”
Though she tries to keep in touch with her family back home, Acuitlapa says she has a hard time with being unable to see them.
“Tension has grown between my husband and I, and he blames himself that I’m depressed about missing my family,” she said. “But I know things will work out. Because love does work.”
THE PUSH TO UNDO CITIZENSHIP
Because Margaret and her children were citizens, they had a choice of which country to live in. If some politicians and activists in the United States get their way, citizen children with two undocumented parents would have no choice but to return their parent’s country. They would be stripped of their citizenship and deported. Supporters of the concept often call citizen children of illegal immigrants “anchor babies,” meaning they are an anchor that keeps illegal immigrants in the United States.
Former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., a leader among those targeting so-called “anchor babies,” introduced Birthright Citizenship Act in 2009. The bill has 91 co-sponsors. (Until March of this year, Deal represented Georgia’s 9th District. He has since resigned to make a run for governor of Georgia.)
The proposed legislation would amend the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act so that children of illegal immigrants would not be considered citizens under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which grants citizenship for those born or naturalized in the United States and who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The bill states that illegal immigrants and their children are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States for the purpose of citizenship. The bill was sent to various U.S. House committees for consideration in 2009 but went no further.
One of the bill’s well-known supporters is U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, a Republican who represents California’s 50th district, which covers part of the greater San Diego area.
“The 14th Amendment of the Constitution has a conditioning clause: ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” Bilbray said. “Undocumented immigrants, like tourists, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; they aren’t subject to the draft, you can’t try them for treason.”
Bilbray and other supporters of the legislation argue that it is constitutional. Under the Birthright Citizenship Act, any child born within the U.S. who has at least one citizen parent, a parent who is a legal permanent resident or a parent serving in the military would still be granted citizenship.
Therefore, Bilbray contends, if a parent is subject in one of these ways to the jurisdiction of the government, then the child could rightfully be considered a citizen.
Bilbray says that citizenship is a right that must be earned.
“It isn’t the soil or the climate,” Bilbray said. “It’s the parent, through their obligation to the government, that earn their children citizenship.”
Kevin Johnson, the dean and professor of law at the University of California, Davis, disagrees. He says Bilbray and others are misinterpreting the “jurisdiction” clause in the 14th Amendment.
“That language was designed to deal with the children of foreign diplomats, who are immune from suit and the laws of the United States while in the United States,” he says. “If proponents of this idea were correct, that would mean undocumented immigrants are not subject to the civil and criminal laws of a state and could not be sentenced to prison for crimes.”
Lino Graglia, a law professor at the University of Texas, supports the idea of revoking the citizenship of children with illegal immigrant parents, arguing that automatic citizenship creates an incentive to break the law.
“It doesn’t really make sense,” Graglia says. “If you’re going to prohibit something, why create a powerful inducement to do it? We make it illegal to come into the country without permission, but if you do it anyway and have children your children are rewarded with citizenship. It’s contrary.”
Graglia says it does not matter that children who have spent their entire lives in the United States may suddenly find themselves deported to a completely unfamiliar environment, where they don’t speak the language or understand the culture.
“Their parents broke the law and came to the country illegally,” Graglia says. “Just as their parents are, they should be subject to deportation.”
Hiroshi Motomura, a professor at the UCLA School of Law has the opposite opinion.
“These children are innocent, even if conceding their parents culpability, so we shouldn’t penalize them,” Motomura says. “Regardless of how they got here, the law should recognize the ties developed and contributions made in this country- especially economically — by unauthorized migrants and their families.”
Other lawmakers are urging reform that would help protect citizen children of undocumented immigrants. U.S. Rep. Jose E. Serrano, D-N.Y., introduced the Child Citizen Protection Act in 2006; the act would amend the immigration reforms of 1996 such that judges would have discretion to consider the best interests of children in deportation hearings. Deportation would not be a forgone conclusion.
BORN IN THE AIR?
Kendrick Nunez, 18, is one of those citizen children who would be affected if the “anchor baby” bill became law. He and his citizen sister currently live in Arkansas without their parents, who were deported to Mexico. He finds the logic of the movement confusing.
“That seems unreasonable. What, you’re just born in the air?” Nunez says. “I recognize there is a problem, but there has to be a better solution.”
Nunez and his younger sister initially followed their parents and other siblings to Mexico but returned to the United States so they could continue studying within the American education system.
“I didn’t go to school when I was in Mexico. I spent my time working — in a car wash, a water park, a field,” Nunez said. “I was illegal there. All my best friends in Arkansas were graduating. I felt like I was missing out on something.”
Hope for an education brought Christopher back into the United States nearly 13 years after his departure. As a teenager growing up in Mexico, Christopher would often daydream about the future he could have in America and the possibilities that might await him if he returned.
“We were home-schooled through elementary, and my mother was very protective,” Christopher recalls of the years he spent in Sinaloa with his mother. “I always wanted to be doing what the other kids were doing.”
When he finished elementary school, Christopher begged his mother to place him in a public school so he could experience more than the small world he knew living in their small home. She enrolled him in, and he started in the fall.
“I was shocked at seeing so many kids!” Christopher said. “They all called me a nerd because I was studious, and I was better educated from being home-schooled.”
Christopher said there were 56 students to a room — a hard adjustment for someone who had constant attention while being home-schooled.
It wasn’t long before his dreams once again outgrew his circumstances.
“I started thinking, ‘What am I going to be, what kind of man am I going to become?’” Christopher said. “At the same time, I was realizing how exciting I found America to be.”
Part of Christopher’s extended family resides in Texas, and he describes visiting as a young teenager and being in awe of his home country.
“Seeing the United States was like a dream,” he said. “Everything was so perfect. I was amazed. I told my mother, one day I wanted to come to the United States and study English so I can live my life here.”
Christopher says his mother agreed that he should return to the United States and take advantage of the future available to him as a citizen, but she hadn’t expected that he would make the decision to go by himself at the age of fourteen.
“A dream was placed in my mind,” Christopher said. “I knew that the goal would be difficult for me, but I was motivated to make this change.”
Christopher returned to America to as a bright-eyed teenager, intent on making the most of the opportunities he would not have in Mexico. He didn’t realize that what lay ahead were years of struggle.
PARENTS DEPORTED, CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE
Because Christopher’s only legal parent, his citizen father, was unable to be his guardian, he accompanied his mother back to Mexico as a young child. When a citizen child is left in this situation — either because both parents are deported or a legal parent is unable to take custody — they often end up staying with relatives who have legal status, entering public foster care or wandering homeless. Complications surrounding a parent’s ability to come to the United States after they have been deported can make it difficult, or impossible, for some deported parents to regain their parental rights, meaning that their children can be put in foster care for long periods of time or put up for adoption.
Such was the case for Nathaly Perez’s mother, who was deported in June 2008, leaving her three teenage daughters behind.
Perez, now 18, was born in San Diego to a large family with varying immigration status. Her parents and four older siblings were all born in Mexico. Nathaly’s sister Eralia, now 19, was just over a year old when the Perez family moved the to the United States. Her two older brothers and eldest sister were nearly grown. Over the next two years, her mother had Nathaly and another daughter, Chrystal Perez, now 15.
Although Perez’s father immigrated legally, his status was revoked when he and Perez’s mother were both jailed for a domestic disturbance. He was subsequently deported in 2006. Perez’s mother was given probation. Following her father’s deportation, Perez recalls her mother struggling to support the family alone, sometimes working two or more jobs to care for her three young daughters.
Eralia Perez points to her father’s sudden, complete absence as the catalyst for a pattern of unhealthy behavior that would continue for years to come.
“I was only 14 years old when he was deported. Everything changed,” Perez said. “I started making bad choices. I wouldn’t listen to my mom.”
Eventually, the Perez sisters would also have to deal with losing their mother. Two years after their father’s deportation their eldest sister filed a report alleging that the girls’ older brothers were abusive towards their youngest sister. As the boys both had prior records, they were not legally allowed to be living with their mother, because probationers can only live together if they have court permission.
“Before this happened, my mom had been doing really well. She was doing awesome,” Nathaly recalls. “I don’t know if anything was going on with my brothers. We didn’t know about it. ”
Perez’s mother and two older brothers were arrested and deported in the following months, and all three girls were placed in public foster care.
After losing so many close family members, Nathaly says she struggled to find stability.
“Little by little I felt like everybody was getting taken away from me. To me, in my head, I was just ready for my sister Eralia to be deported,” Nathaly said.
Eralia, also an undocumented immigrant, had been struggling for some time before her mother’s deportation, and it took her several years to get back on solid ground. During that time, she was separated from her younger sisters and sent to live in a different home in the small, rural town of Jackson, Calif.
“The part that killed me the most was that when I finally wanted to stop doing all that running around and come home and make up for that lost time with my mom, it was too late,” Eralia said.
In time, Eralia finally found a foster mother who helped her realize who she wanted to be and gave her the structure and stability she needed to get there. She recently graduated from high school and received her green card.
Nathaly also graduated this past June, and looks forward to attending college in the future.
“I don’t know for sure what I’m going to do yet,” she says. “I just know I’m going to do my best, and keep striving.”
The Perez sisters were able to find foster parents that not only made them feel loved but provided them with role models they could respect. That is not the case for many children who are placed in the system.
Hemal Sharifzada is a former foster youth who now works for California Youth Connection, an organization that advocates for foster care support and educates foster youth on how they can navigate the world of adulthood when they may not have family support.
Sharifzada says that one of the biggest hurdles many foster youth will face is trying to find a place where they feel loved and supported.
“You build a lot of barriers. Everyone is kind of a question mark,” he says, speaking from years of experience. “You’re always thinking, ‘Who are you, how long are you going to be around- are you going to leave, are you going to stay? Does it matter?’”
Sherifzada says that the trust issues and emotional struggles common among foster youth often carry into adulthood and can complicate future relationships.
There are no nationwide statistics on the number of citizen children placed in foster care after a parent’s deportation.
But according to numbers reported by the Department of Health and Human Services, if 10 percent of the approximately 5 million children of undocumented parents were placed in foster care, this would double the number of children in the system, which is already overburdened. In 2009 by the Child Welfare League of America reported the cost for public foster care exceeds $4 billion per year.
Financial estimates don’t take into account the human costs of placing a child in foster care. According to the report by the Child Welfare League of America, an estimated 85 percent of all youth in public foster care have an emotional disorder, a substance abuse problem or both. Statistics indicate that children who grow up in foster care will experience a wide variety of hardships at a much higher rate than the general population.
HOMELESS, HUNGRY AND WANDERING
Not all children of deported parents will end up in foster care, but even those who don’t often lack basic family support.
Stephen Coger, a social worker in Arkansas, has worked with many undocumented immigrants in his town of Fayetteville. Coger says that even the loss of one parent tends to have an extremely negative effect on the upbringing of a child.
“Food hardship is one of the most common occurrences for children in these situations,” Coger says. “Often these families need both incomes. When a parent is deported the household income decreases significantly.”
Homelessness can also become a consequence. When Christopher returned to America, he found friends and family members in Arizona willing to take him in — but only for a time.
In many ways, he lived like most American teenagers. He attended high school and played tennis on the school team. Having always been a creative child, he found the arts especially stimulating.
“It was really hard at first because I didn’t speak English. My mom thought that after a month I would give up,” he said, laughing. “She was amazed how well I did after only a semester. She said she was really proud of me.”
But Christopher struggled trying to find a place within families that weren’t his own. One night, after his presence caused a bitter argument among relatives who had taken him in, he ran away. After spending a terrifying night alone in a park, he was able to find a friend’s family willing to take him in.
The family lived close to some of Christopher’s other relatives. The mother of the family remembers her son’s friend as being isolated from family.
“I know he sometimes talked to his grandmother and aunt in California … and of course his mother. But his father didn’t seem to be in the picture,” she said. “He didn’t really have anyone to depend on.”
Unfortunately, things didn’t get easier from there; in just a few months, the economic downturn resulted in his friend’s father losing his job.
“It was some of the best times of my life, living with that family,” Christopher says. “When they told me they couldn’t afford to have me anymore, I told them it was OK. I told them that they had saved my life.”
At the age of 15, Christopher found himself cleaning his community church to earn room and board there. In time, he found another family willing to take him in.
“I was glad to have a place to live, but I was doing a lot of work around the house to earn my keep,” he said. “That was my junior year. It was hard for me to see all the other kids having fun, being kids.”
In spite of these struggles, Christopher says he never regretted his decision to return to the United States. Instead of seeing a country that has let him down, he sees the country of the American Dream — a dream that as a citizen he is entitled to.
THE AMERICAN DREAM
The desire to help immigrants take part in the American Dream drove Jose “Joe” Kennard to take action. A successful real estate investor and land developer, Kennard founded the Organization to Help Citizen Children with hopes that he might find like-minded community members to spark a movement toward providing better options for citizen children.
Until two years ago, Kennard and his wife lived in Seattle — as did Ana Reyes, a woman Kennard had never met. Unlike Kennard, however, Reyes was living and working in the country illegally. In 2007, U.S. immigration officials came to arrest Reyes early on the morning of her birthday. It was also the day her 13-year-old daughter Julie Quiroz was to graduate from seventh grade. Instead, Quiroz spent the afternoon helping her grandmother empty her family’s Seattle home, preparing herself and her younger sister to move to Mexico.
“I just remember looking out the window and seeing my mom in handcuffs,” Quiroz says. “My little sister was crying. Then we had to empty out the house … It kind of felt like this was it.”
Shortly after, Quiroz was reunited with her mother, brother and stepfather — in Mexico. The whole family had been deported. She began attending school, but was soon frustrated by her inability to keep up.
“I couldn’t read or write Spanish! I felt out of place, like I didn’t belong,” she said. “I only went to school for two weeks … then I guess I just gave up. I couldn’t understand anything.”
After she dropped out of school, help came to Quiroz’s family in an unexpected way. Having read an article about her family’s plight in The Seattle Times one Sunday, Joe Kennard felt compelled to help Julie — and all citizen children placed in these situations.
“I read the follow-up article about what was happening with Julie since her family was deported. I found the article really heart wrenching,” Kennard remembers. “I couldn’t shake it. We went to church and continued our usual routine, but when we got home I told my wife about it. I told her I felt like maybe the Lord was calling me to help this family.”
Kennard says his wife was supportive of what he felt he had to do.
“She just says, ‘If that’s what you think he’s telling you, then that’s what you ought to do,’” Kennard said.
Kennard began communicating by phone with Ana Reyes, trying to think of a solution her daughter Julie and other kids in her situation.
“I did some research, and I thought that the best way to help would be to get churches involved,” Kennard says. “I thought if we could get a network of families started through churches on both sides of the border we could create a support system for the children to go back and forth.”
Kennard provided funding for Reyes to move from Mexico City to Juarez so that Julie could attend school across the border in El Paso. He arranged for a family to take Julie in during the school week, and she would return to her mother on weekends.
“The idea was to minimize the trauma on these children by finding legal alternatives,” Kennard says of his idea.
In time, the violence in Juarez became a concern for Reyes, and she worried for the safety of herself and her two young daughters. She decided to move back to Mexico City. Kennard, who was committed to helping Julie achieve her dreams, extended her the offer of taking up residence with himself and his family for the entire school year.
“I had to make the choice to go with my mom in Mexico or stay here with the Kennards,” Quiroz says. “It was a really hard choice, but I decided to stay.”
Kennard and his wife returned to his native Texas. He opened an authentic Mexican restaurant that serves his mother’s traditional dishes in the downtown square and continues to advocate for the rights of citizen children.
“The problem is that we are punishing the children, and they are innocents in this situation,” Kennard says. “The laws aren’t protecting them — and as citizens they deserve to have their rights taken into consideration.”
According to a 2009 study by Human Rights Watch, nearly every major human rights treaty recognizes the need for special protection of children. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, explicitly states that every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
Though Kennard is glad to be doing his part to find a solution, he says he has been disheartened that his organization hasn’t gotten much traction.
“What was really surprising to me was that we couldn’t really get churches to help,” Kennard says. “To me, at the time, fellow evangelicals weren’t acting very Christian. They were saying that these people were illegal, and obeying the law is a biblical mandate …. To me, the overriding biblical mandate is ‘Love your neighbor.’ I couldn’t believe fellow Christians were taking such a cavalier-or sometimes outright hostile- attitude toward these families.”
But luckily for Julie Quiroz, now 15, Joe Kennard stepped up to become the defender of her rights. Quiroz currently lives with Kennard and his family at their home in Waxahachie, Texas. She attends a local school, where she is excelling, but the opportunity comes with a downside. She only sees her family on Christmas and summer vacation, when she travels to Mexico for the school break.
“It’s hard, always having to leave them again,” Quiroz says. “It’s like I almost don’t want to get very attached to them, because I know I have to go — but of course it’s hard not to get attached.”
Quiroz knows she is lucky. Many children in her situation may see their families even less, if at all. Kendrick Nunez hasn’t seen his family in more than six months; the Perez sisters haven’t seen their mother since she was deported more than two years ago. In spite of the obstacles that have been placed in front of these children, each of them has expressed a desire to remain in the United States.
“I don’t know what I’d be doing if I stayed there [in Mexico],” Quiroz says. “Probably doing nothing with my life, making nothing of myself.”
For Christopher, the future is getting brighter — but his achievements have been hard won with years of difficulty and uncertainty. He was able to find a home at the Tumbleweeds Center for Youth Development in Phoenix and was accepted to Arizona State University for the coming fall. He puts his creativity to good use, participating in Phoenix’s popular art walk on the first Friday of every month.
“I am glad that I came here, even if I had to go through those hard times,” he says. “It’s made me who I am.”
Like most Americans, I am a descendant of immigrants and a grateful beneficiary of the opportunities available to our nation’s citizens. My grandparents emigrated from Mexico in the early 20th century seeking a better life, and they found it working in the fields and dairy farms of Texas. Diversity is one of the great strengths of the United States — diversity fueled by the migration of ethnicities, cultures and ideas.
Today, however, there is virtually universal agreement that our immigration process is broken. While security on our southern border has improved in the past decade, it remains inadequate in a post-9/11 world. Many employers hire undocumented workers with little concern about prosecution. Thousands of people cross our borders illegally believing they will not be arrested, expecting instead to receive benefits and, eventually, amnesty.
Based on what I have observed, most illegal immigrants come to America to provide for their families, and by most accounts, they contribute to our economy. Nevertheless, we are a nation of laws. When people break the law with impunity, it encourages further disobedience and breeds further disrespect for the rule of law.
Obama administration officials went to court recently to stop Arizona from enforcing federal immigration laws through a newly enacted state law, arguing that the Constitution gives them sole authority in this arena. How the courts will ultimately decide this question is unclear, but with the federal government’s claim of authority comes responsibility — and so far, our national leaders have failed us.
President George W. Bush pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, but Republican members of Congress refused to join him. Although President Obama and the present congressional leadership have used their majority to enact sweeping health-care and financial reform, they seem to lack the will to try to pass comprehensive immigration legislation. Even my apolitical and saintly 78-year-old mother wonders whether the Democrats are keeping this issue on the table for political reasons, hoping that Republicans will propose enforcement measures that alienate Hispanic voters.
Most recently, some politicians and concerned citizens have expressed a desire to amend the 14th Amendment of our Constitution, which says in Section 1, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Proponents want to discourage undocumented mothers from crossing our borders to give birth to children derogatorily referred to as “anchor babies,” who by law are American citizens. Such a change is difficult to carry out, as it should be, requiring a new amendment ratified by three-quarters of the states.
I do not support such an amendment. Based on principles from my tenure as a judge, I think constitutional amendments should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances that we cannot address effectively through legislation or regulation. Because most undocumented workers come here to provide for themselves and their families, a constitutional amendment will not solve our immigration crisis. People will certainly continue to cross our borders to find a better life, irrespective of the possibilities of U.S. citizenship.
As the nation’s former chief law enforcement officer and a citizen who believes in the rule of law, I cannot condone anyone coming into this country illegally. However, as a father who wants the best for my own children, I understand why these parents risk coming to America — especially when there is little fear of prosecution. If we want to stop this practice, we should pass and enforce comprehensive immigration legislation rather than amend our Constitution.
We need a new immigration policy that complements our national security policy as well as our economic policy. In a post-9/11 world, we must know who is coming into this country and why — we cannot have true security if we do not secure our borders. Our policy should reinforce respect for the law through effective enforcement that includes a streamlined deportation process and tougher penalties on employers that hire undocumented workers.
Our immigration policy should also promote commerce and strengthen our economy. The reality is that there are jobs Americans do not want, and there are skilled jobs for which Americans are not available. Our policy should include a more robust temporary-worker program (without more bureaucracy) that attracts both skilled and unskilled workers to sustain our economy.
Finally, our immigration policy must be practical, enforceable and capable of effective implementation without enormous delays or many mistakes. It must also be fair to those who follow the rules.
As our nation’s first Hispanic attorney general, I have seen both the beauty of our tradition of immigration as well as the threats that come with a broken system. We need to fix the process. This work will be complicated, because the best solution will surely affect families, foreign policy, national security, our economy — and will touch upon the very essence of who we are as a country. It will take courage to pass meaningful legislation, but to do less or to take shortcuts places our security at risk. Americans expect and deserve better of their leaders in Washington.
