Thread: Respect 'Dream Act' protesters - deport them

Respect 'Dream Act' protesters - deport them

Federal law enforcement officials did the worst possible thing to six young illegal immigrants who were arrested for blocking an intersection near Trevor G. Browne High School on Tuesday:

They set them free.

The reason for letting the kids go, according to a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was that the protesters did not meet the level of criminality that the agency uses for deporting illegal immigrants, which includes recent border crossers and "egregious" violators who have been deported before and returned to the U.S.

These were young people who’d been carried into the country as infants or toddlers and raised here. They’re strong, smart, educated Americans in every way – except for their birth certificates.

The young people blocked the intersection of 75th Avenue and Cheery Lynn Road in order to demand passage of the Dream Act, a federal proposal that goes back to 1991 and would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children provided they attend college or join the military.

Some of Arizona’s most conservative politicians, including Sen. John McCain, supported the Dream Act until it became politically costly to do so. Now they speak against it.

A while back a group of young people camped out near McCain’s Phoenix office in support of the act. One of the protesters, 21-year-old Michael Nazario, told the Republic’s Richard Ruelas, “I watch the world go by, knowing I could very well be part of that world ... I want to do something greater. I want to be a Marine. I want to give back. Many people don't cherish what they have; (they) take for granted what they have here in America. We Dream Act students, we don't do that."

Over the years I’ve spoken with a number of young people like Nazario. One of them, a young woman, had recently graduated with honors from college.

"I have my license to work as a registered nurse,” she told me, “but current immigration policy does not really cover people like me who want to come out of the shadows and become a contributing member of the country I love and grew up in."

It doesn’t make sense.

Dr. Allan Cameron, a retired teacher who helped to create the robotics team at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, told me a while back, "One of our students graduated with a secondary-education teacher degree in mathematics. A bilingual, intelligent young man from the Hayden neighborhood, who is now hanging drywall."

If the humanity of the situation doesn’t get to you, the economics should. We’ve spent a lot of money educating these non-citizen children. We should demand a return on our investment by allowing them to become taxpaying members of society. But we don’t.

Even when a group young protesters make it impossible to ignore them by blocking traffic and getting arrested for disrupting a thoroughfare and disorderly conduct we show them no respect.

We set them free.

If they had been deported (as many of those who called my office or sent me e-mails would have liked to see happen) the issue of the Dream Act and the young people would have stayed in the news. At the very least we would have been forced to ask ourselves if shipping off young people like these because of something their parents did long ago was something we as a nation want to do.

But the feds let the protesters go.

I’d guess that the Obama administration considers its policy a more reasonable and more humane way to treat young people whose only wish is to contribute to the society in which they were raised.

Actually, the policy is an insult. It isn’t compassionate; it’s expedient. It’s a way of keeping a prickly divisive issue out of the news during an election year.

The kids who blocked the street and threw their illegal status in our faces were demanding federal officials to pay attention. To show them respect. To not ignore them. Yet that is exactly what the feds did. They set them free. They told them, in essence, you are not criminals. You are not citizens. You are nothing.

(Column for Mar. 23, 2012 Arizona Republic)

azcentral.com blogs - E.J. Montini's Columns & Blog - EJMontini - Respect 'Dream Act' protesters - deport them

"I have my license to work as a registered nurse,” she told me, “but current immigration policy does not really cover people like me who want to come out of the shadows and become a contributing member of the country I love and grew up in."

This is a HUGE problem, because she should NEVER have been admitted into a college in the 1st place...Its NOT our fault her parent brought her here...As an Adult, she had/has the CHOICE to go back where she was brought from and apply for Legal Entry, then use her degree....But to just give her status would be 100% wrong!

And WHY is it ALWAYS in the news and other media that Illegals are "protesting"?...I have yet to hear of groups of Legal Americans making a Firm Stand and Protesting against these Illegals

I am sooooo sick of their excuses!! I am sooooo sick of them getting their way!! We need more protests of our own, more media coverage against these arrogant and bold in your face illegals.

Why don't they protest in front of the Mexican counsulate that there are no opportunities in their home country?