Shattered Dreams
The Dreamers. There but for the grace of God...
Down the street lives a child that has gone to school with our children since first grade. Her parents don't speak English very well, and sometimes the girl has to translate for them. Instead, they speak a rapid-fire Spanish. They are good neighbors, though. We can see both parents go to work every day, and that their daughter is well-taken care of.
The child has turned into a young woman and has recently graduated from college and graduate school. She has become a social worker. Recently, with all the growing hysteria against immigrants, her parents have been staying at home more and more. Both still go to work, but other than that, don't leave the house. Their daughter has been going out to bring them necessary groceries. She only replies that they don't feel like going shopping when we ask about her parents. But one day there is a commotion, and police and other people in uniforms are at the neighbors' house. The parents are brought out, crying, and put in a police car and taken away. We're dumbfounded; they've always been model neighbors.
The daughter comes by later, and, crying, confesses that her parents are illegal immigrants, and that she herself is a "Dreamer." She's scared that her parents are now going to be deported back to Guatemala, where they haven't been for the last twenty years. She has never even been there since she left when she was five years old. This city and this country are the only home she's ever known, and now that is in danger of ending. The President has said he would end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and she fears the future. For now, she says she'll continue to work and live her life, but she doesn't know what the future will hold.
This isn't real, but it could be. Almost a million young people, studying or already giving back to society, could be told they don't belong in the only country they know. Most of them have never left the United States since they entered because of lack of paperwork, and don't know what life is like outside the fifty states, only second hand from their parents' tales.
But for the good will of a consular officer, I might have been an illegal immigrant, too. My father lived and worked illegally in Boston in 1964, after leaving the cargo ship he had been working on when it docked in Virginia. He was deported back to Spain at the end of that year. We applied for green cards in 1969, when I was born, with my mother's brother as sponsor. We could easily have been denied. We could then easily have bought the plane tickets and arrived in Boston as tourists, like others we know did then, and stayed on.
The truth is, Congress had never been enthusiastic about making DACA into a firm law. What the Republican-held Congress was more concerned with was with snubbing their collective nose at President Obama. Now, the ball is in their court, and now they have to decide the future of a segment of the population which only contributes to society. Much has been said about illegal aliens and gangs and crime and drugs. Much has been said to demonize those who speak a different language and have a different origin from the majority of those in power. These young people are called Dreamers because that's what they have - they have a dream for the future that is much the same as the dream of many who arrived at Ellis Island over a hundred years ago. Their dream is the same as that of the grandparents or parents of those Congressmen and -women who pile them with the criminal refuse. But because those Dreamers lack a paper that gives public legitimacy to their dream, they are being told they have no right to that dream.
Much is said about how these young people and their parents have broken the law. Yet, who says that law is morally correct? It may have been morally correct at its inception, almost a hundred years ago, but morals change, and the laws should change, as well. Once upon a time it was morally correct to whip a thief. Now we consider it cruel and unusual punishment. There is nothing that says that immigration law cannot be changed. Then let's change it, make it more humane, and let these Dreamers and their families stay in the country they have contributed to. And let's make it possible for future Dreamers to contribute to society.
Down the street lives a child that has gone to school with our children since first grade. Her parents don't speak English very well, and sometimes the girl has to translate for them. Instead, they speak a rapid-fire Spanish. They are good neighbors, though. We can see both parents go to work every day, and that their daughter is well-taken care of.
The child has turned into a young woman and has recently graduated from college and graduate school. She has become a social worker. Recently, with all the growing hysteria against immigrants, her parents have been staying at home more and more. Both still go to work, but other than that, don't leave the house. Their daughter has been going out to bring them necessary groceries. She only replies that they don't feel like going shopping when we ask about her parents. But one day there is a commotion, and police and other people in uniforms are at the neighbors' house. The parents are brought out, crying, and put in a police car and taken away. We're dumbfounded; they've always been model neighbors.
The daughter comes by later, and, crying, confesses that her parents are illegal immigrants, and that she herself is a "Dreamer." She's scared that her parents are now going to be deported back to Guatemala, where they haven't been for the last twenty years. She has never even been there since she left when she was five years old. This city and this country are the only home she's ever known, and now that is in danger of ending. The President has said he would end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and she fears the future. For now, she says she'll continue to work and live her life, but she doesn't know what the future will hold.
This isn't real, but it could be. Almost a million young people, studying or already giving back to society, could be told they don't belong in the only country they know. Most of them have never left the United States since they entered because of lack of paperwork, and don't know what life is like outside the fifty states, only second hand from their parents' tales.
But for the good will of a consular officer, I might have been an illegal immigrant, too. My father lived and worked illegally in Boston in 1964, after leaving the cargo ship he had been working on when it docked in Virginia. He was deported back to Spain at the end of that year. We applied for green cards in 1969, when I was born, with my mother's brother as sponsor. We could easily have been denied. We could then easily have bought the plane tickets and arrived in Boston as tourists, like others we know did then, and stayed on.
The truth is, Congress had never been enthusiastic about making DACA into a firm law. What the Republican-held Congress was more concerned with was with snubbing their collective nose at President Obama. Now, the ball is in their court, and now they have to decide the future of a segment of the population which only contributes to society. Much has been said about illegal aliens and gangs and crime and drugs. Much has been said to demonize those who speak a different language and have a different origin from the majority of those in power. These young people are called Dreamers because that's what they have - they have a dream for the future that is much the same as the dream of many who arrived at Ellis Island over a hundred years ago. Their dream is the same as that of the grandparents or parents of those Congressmen and -women who pile them with the criminal refuse. But because those Dreamers lack a paper that gives public legitimacy to their dream, they are being told they have no right to that dream.
Much is said about how these young people and their parents have broken the law. Yet, who says that law is morally correct? It may have been morally correct at its inception, almost a hundred years ago, but morals change, and the laws should change, as well. Once upon a time it was morally correct to whip a thief. Now we consider it cruel and unusual punishment. There is nothing that says that immigration law cannot be changed. Then let's change it, make it more humane, and let these Dreamers and their families stay in the country they have contributed to. And let's make it possible for future Dreamers to contribute to society.
Sad and beautifully said.
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