I’m tired of hearing about immigration. Reading about the latest immigration news or the current status on immigration reform can get really monotonous. It’s even worse writing about it.
And today, I and at least 100,000 other people will saunter through cities from L.A. to Boston in support of immigration reform. It’s promising to be a cloudy, damp day in Chicago, so I have that to look forward to, as well. Will the demonstrations accomplish anything? Who knows. (We said the same thing last year, and the year before that too.) We’ll just have to show up and hope for the best (another mantra).
If you’re tired of hearing about immigration as much as I am, if you feel like you might throw your laptop out your fourth-story apartment window if you read another immigration-focused headline, then do something about it: help pass the DREAM Act and other reforms to immigration law.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to provide a brief summary of the bill. I’m sure you’ve read so much about it in the past five years that you probably feel as though you penned the damn thing yourself.
But I am going to give you two reasons why you should be doing everything in your power to help Congress and the president pass this eternally doomed piece of legislation – always a bridesmaid and never a law. Hopefully they’re reasons you haven’t heard before.
The first reason I’ve already given you, that if you pass immigration reform, you will never hear about the issue so long as you live. Well, at least not for a while. And if the immigration issue does crop up again 10 or 20 years down the line, you can be content in knowing that you and your generation have already done your part. So, let someone else handle it.
The second reason is the moral one. It’s the reason that argues for the dignity of young adults forced to live clandestine lives through no decision of their own. These men and women are as American as… well, immigration.
They are also American citizens – not legally, but in the Platonic sense. They are citizens because they are law-abiding, contributing members of American society. They were raised on American values, fed American culture, regaled with American history, and encouraged to dream American dreams. More important, they defend America’s borders with their American lives, and in the economy, they are the source of billions of American dollars every year.
Anyone who moved a lot when they were a kid – like I did – can’t help but sympathize with these American immigrants. My mom moved us from Humboldt Park in Chicago to a suburb (for what else but a better life). Yet for all I knew, she could’ve been taking my siblings and I to Indonesia. When you’re too young to know, concepts like Chicago, America and border are just words.
That’s why I continue reading about immigration. That’s why I won’t stop writing about it, why I’m marching in the rain tomorrow. It’s my generation’s moral cause.
But even if you disagree with me, you should want to do anything you can to help pass immigration reform. At the very least, it’ll get people like me to stop talking about it.
About Hector Luis Alamo, Jr.
Amen my brother
I am sick to death of the immigration topic too. I know this might be digging the knife in deeper, but marching does so little. We need more representation, we need more social connections, we need more affluence, we need more power. While the numbers rise, the influence does not and cohesion is a problem. We are often pulled in so many directions, politicians have a tough time discerning where we stand and to our own detriment. Keep reading, keep writing, keep informing. We need that.
This is not even an issue. Anyone can voluntarily pay for any college-bound kid’s education. Get involved, co-sign for their loan or help them pay yourself.
It’s not about college tuition. It’s about endowing them with the rights and privileges of American citizenship that have been denied to them their whole lives.
Ooo well. Sorry
Yomi doesn’t know if she wants her FB banner to have the American flag or the once-U.S.-banned Puerto Rican flag. Talk about inner conflict.
Why does the US tax payer have to reward people who have broken the law and or whose parents have broken the law and coddle people who with no shame tell you to your face that they will continue to break the laws just because? Especially when there are other immigrants that have done everything legally – not fair to those legal immigrants. Immigration reform would really be helping those from any nation who have applied by the book and don’t have criminal records and have a skill or profession that will benefit the nation. Plus are the dream actors going to then bring in more family members to live in the US?
Just to clarify, I am an American first and a Puerto Rican second. And as an American, I don’t think America — a country born from a struggle against colonial rule — should have any colonies of its own.
It’s completely un-American (not mention morally unconscionable) to make children criminals just because their parents broke the law. Not since the days of slavery — when the enslavement of parents meant the enslavement of children — has the legal status of parents been transferred to children. In America, everyone is their own person with their own rights. You are not what your parents are.
I guess everybody just thinks we’re big enough and strong enough as a nation to take care of everybody…. Sigh, if that were only true then people wouldn’t be arguing about it anywhere, even Facebook
We aren’t big enough or strong enough to take care of everybody in the world. But we have to be good enough to do what is right.
Hector, you cannot “endow” someone the rights and immunities of an American citizen when you, or your parents, are subject to the laws of another nation, without first going through the legal process. Or the government grants you amnesty.
What about everyone else who waits legally for 10 plus years to come by?
Kev, I get what you’re saying, but you seem to assume that only pieces of paper make American citizens.
A person, brought here as a child (and therefore, by no will of their own), given an American upbringing, graduating from an American high school, serving in the American armed forces or receiving an American post-secondary education — this person is an American citizen, even though they don’t have a social security number or driver’s license. They are undocumented due to an unjust legal system, but they are American citizens.
If it’s morally reprehensible to deport such a person — which it is — then the law must be unjust.
Justice is the act of giving people what they deserve, either reward or punishment. DREAMers deserve a pathway to citizenship, so to deny them that is the definition of injustice.
Right on maria
@mario @alicia: children are basically held hostage to the whims of their parents. What will they do? Who among us is ready to be sent to a foreign country if by some fluke your origins be deemed illegitimate? Not I. Let’s speak nothing of the compulsory caveat , whereby these innocents are remanded to service or college, an unthinkable imposition to any american…a pittance for amnesty? I call it an insult, but for the appeasement of the more callous among us. We may not be able to take care of the world, but those children that fall through the cracks… Yes, I think we an afford to give them a shot. I mean, what a waste of teaching, productivity and time already invested in these people…does that count for nothing?
Hector, sadly being “good enough” will eventually destroy us as a nation. We a strong, but it can only go so far.
“Callous.” Good word.
What would they have the country do, throw these people out of the only country they’ve ever known? Would they allow the country they love so much — the country they style as the world’s foremost bastion of liberty and equality — to mistreat such people as these, American citizens born somewhere else?
Reason cannot comprehend it and compassion will not stand for it.
Principles make an American, not birth certificates.
There is also an under lying attitude amongst many who come here illegally and break the laws but yet expect the world – like, those silly gringos, well take EM for all they have, cause they are gringos!
I would imagine that’s a small percentage of the people who come or stay illegally. Most people are just looking for safety and opportunity, escaping countries ravaged by 100 years of U.S. interventionist policies.
America got rich by making other countries in this hemisphere virtually uninhabitable. What did we think would happen?
Ironically, the illegal immigration crisis can be blamed on everyone involved, on both sides of the border — except the DREAMers.
Its crazy how hardcore republicans like the ones on display here are quick to judge and condemn others but yet don’t most republicans deem christianity and its core principles extremely important? And doesn’t Christianity teach us to show mercy and most importantly to love one another with brotherly love? I know because I’m Christian myself. And so where are you core Christian values in display here because when I look back at the comments post it on here I see non and I see is a legion of hypocrites.
We will not be held captive by people who came here to game the system. Sometimes when you play games you lose. The robbing and pillaging have gone on too long. Citizenship will be given to the law-abiding and worthy, and will not be stolen. It is coming to an end. Prepare to self-deport or be deported.