Updated May 13. 2008 9:56PM
Top Postville student in hiding
By Adam Belz
The Gazette
adam.belz@gazettecommunications.com

POSTVILLE - Late Tuesday afternoon, Postville schools Superintendent Dave Strudthoff was angry.

Not at the immigration authorities, or Agriprocessors or undocumented workers, but at the U.S. Congress.

He considers lawmakers' "lack of courage" a personal affront, for their failure to pass a bill that would give children of illegal immigrants a chance to earn citizenship.

One of the top five students at Postville, set to graduate at the end of the term, is Mexican. He's been in school at Postville since third grade.

"The day he graduates, with honors, he will go underground," Strudthoff said, declining to give the student's name. "He did not choose that life. That life was chosen for him."

The boy's mother is illegal, his father is a legal resident, Strudthoff said, but the whole family is in hiding after Monday's raid.

"I wanted him to be a teacher," he said.

Strudthoff was referring to the DREAM Act — for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. It would have given the children of illegal immigrants a chance to earn permanent residency if they kept out of trouble and either went to college or joined the military.

The bill failed in the U.S. Senate in October 2007. It has never come to a vote in the U.S. House. It was enough for Strudthoff to call both lawmaking bodies "absolute cowards."

He said 90 percent of the Latinos at Postville High School were not in class Tuesday. He did not have the number of students that represented.

One-third of the Latino children in kindergarten through eighth grade were not in class, approximately 150 students.

Contact the writer: (319) 398-8273 or adam.belz@gazcomm.com

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