The Legality of Dreaming

A year or so ago, when I was researching a story about low-scoring Jefferson High School, I happened to meet with some of the student leaders who were working with a group of activist faculty members in an effort to shake some help out of the district for their troubled campus. One kid in particular impressed me. He was a 12th grader, skinny, loaded with energy. Not a handsome kid per se, but winning. The kid—I don’t remember his name, but let’s call him Jaime—had a great smile, tons of charm, and an ability for smart and interesting patter. His teachers assured me that he was intelligent, but I saw that without being told. Since Jaime was a senior, I asked him what he intended to do when he graduated. What I meant, was where did he plan to go to college? At the question, his smile faltered. He wasn’t really sure, he said, he was still trying to make up his mind. Then he changed the subject.

A few minutes later, his science teacher took me aside. “Jaime doesn’t have papers.”

Oh. Right. Of course. How stupid of me not to realize.

It’s a story that I seem to be hearing more and more lately. When the subject came up last quarter in my UC Irvine class, I was surprised to find that nearly every student in the room had some friend with a similar dilemma. And, the more education reporting I do, the more kids I run across with situations just like Jaime’s.

He’d been in the U.S. since he was three. His parents had entered illegally. But now he was seventeen, and exactly the kind of student that a string of colleges would be delighted to accept. And certainly Jaime was the kind of bright, personable, self-starting kid whom anyone with any sense would want to nurture and encourage.

But because we live in a country that can’t make up its mind about its immigration policy, we act as a magnet for people like Jaime’s parents. To put it more plainly, several segments of our economy are addicted to the cheap labor such immigrants provide. But, when the best and the brightest of the children of these bargain-basement workers want to go to college, we do our best to ignore the issue—nevermind that these are kids who, more often then not, have known no other country but this one from the time they were infants or toddlers.

And this is not, by the way, a small matter: According to most estimates, around 65,000 undocumented immigrants graduate from American high schools each year. Forty percent of those kids are in California.

Enter the Dream Act—which is about to be introduced (again) by Senator Dick Durbin, this time as an amendment to the annual defense spending authorization bill.

For those unsure about the content of the act, the LA Daily News has this summary:

Under Durbin’s bill, anyone who entered the U.S. before age 16 and lived in the country at least five years and has a high school diploma could apply for legal status.

Over the next six years, the applicant would have to spend two years in college or in military service before becoming qualified for legal permanent residency and, ultimately, citizenship.

The bill is expected to make it easily through the senate, with such supporters as John McCain and other Republicans.

After that, there will be problems. Our failed immigration policy has become THE flash point issue of the moment. As a result, those opposed to the issue are already doing all they can to rile up the crowds with shrieks of “back-door amnesty” and “anchor adults”—which studiously ignores the cost—moral and fiscal—of leaving these kids in the shadows.

While I was writing this post, I happened to notice a remarkably sane Op Ed in the LA Times by Douglas McGray, a UCLA instructor who has had his own experiences with promising kids who are trapped by their immigration status. His example is a girl named Lucia who was “…voted queen of her high school prom and named valedictorian of her graduating class. She had a plan. She wanted to enlist in the Marines, go to college and apply to work for the CIA — she liked spy movies.”

But, then in her senior year in high school, as Lucia was making excited plans for her future, she learned the realities of life for a girl with no papers.

Illegal immigration is a complicated problem. Lucia’s parents broke the law to come here. Eventually Congress is going to have to decide what to do about them and millions of others like them. But Americans don’t punish children for the sins of their parents, and in this case, we share some responsibility. We have spent the last 20 years mostly ignoring our broken immigration system. While we dithered and delayed, kids were growing up.

At UCLA, I’ve met undocumented students who were brought to the United States as infants, and others who arrived so long ago that English is the only language they speak without an accent. It makes no sense to deport these kids now — and realistically, we won’t, not more than a handful. It makes just as little sense to keep them here in illegal, unskilled jobs.

Every year, thousands of our nation’s brightest and best students graduating from high school find that the path to decent jobs and the doors of higher education and the military are essentially shut tight against them for one reason alone: They lack legal immigration status because as young children, they were brought to this country by their parents.

And if you’re willing to hear one more perspective on the matter—but delivered in a way that’s entertaining, quirky, poignant, and informative— listen to this NPR story produced by another kid who, like the Lucia and Jaime, longs to have the chance to succeed in the country that is, for all practical purposes, the only home he’s ever known.

And then, after you listen, think for a minute: Do we really want to continue with a policy that results in 65,000 dreams deferred yearly.

I believe Langston Hughes had something to say about the wisdom of continuing down that particular road.