I told some lies to a ‘dreamer’
Ilied to a “dreamer.” The young woman told me she graduated from a Phoenix high school and is taking classes in community college. She wants to be a nurse.
That won’t happen unless she becomes a citizen.
She told me she has lived in the United States since she was less than a year old and qualifies for President Barack Obama’s program that defers deportation for unauthorized immigrants under the age of 31 who entered the United States before age 16, provided they are in school, graduate from high school or serve in the military and have no felony record.
These are largely the same young people who would qualify for the opportunity to become citizens under the yet-tobe passed Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (Dream) Act.
There are roughly 50,000 or so dreamers in Arizona.
This particular one approached me at a local Costco, asking if I was “that writer from the newspaper” and saying I’d visited the middle school she’d attended some years ago.
She wondered if it was OK to ask me a question. I said it was. “Are you going to write about how they’re not passing the immigration law (for comprehensive reform) in Washington?” she said. “Maybe if you wrote something and other reporters wrote something, the congressmen would pass it. What do you think?” The honest answer is: no. I decided not to be honest. “I’ll give it a try,” I said. The Republican members of Congress from Arizona who oppose the immigration and border-security plan passed by the Senate don’t seem inclined to change their minds, even though Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake are among those who crafted the legislation.
Not that anything could happen soon anyway. Congress takes off the entire month of August. Five weeks. And when members return in September, the House of Representatives, where the comprehensive immigration-reform bill is stalled, is scheduled to be in session nine — count ’em, nine — days. And there are plenty of other important issues to deal with.
The following month, October, the House is in session only 14 days. Eight in November. Eight in December.
For all of 2013, the House will be in session 126 days. Imagine that. The number of working days in an average year (for Average Joes like us) is about 250. If you’ve got a couple of weeks of paid vacation, it’s about 235.
Our representatives work 100 fewer days. For us. They spend the rest of their time working for themselves, raising money to get re-elected to jobs that put them in session for 126 days and pay them $174,000. Plus perks.
The young dreamer who approached me said she had handed out fliers in the past election promoting candidates who supported immigration reform.
She said she’d participated in a few protests.
She said she was thinking of volunteering with organizations that were trying to persuade Republican mem- bers of the House who oppose comprehensive immigration reform to change their minds.
She wanted to know if that would help. The honest answer is: no. I decided not to be honest. “It can’t hurt,” I told her. There are many positive reasons to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Bringing people out of the shadows would add to the tax base, unburden a number of social-service and health-care providers and allow young people like the dreamers to flourish in a way that would not otherwise be possible.
We’ve already given dreamers a public education. The young woman I met was energetic, hopeful, optimistic, even patriotic.
She still seemed to believe in the American ideal she’d learned about in school, that our country’s idea of “public service” means those who are elected to Congress put the nation first, their political party second and themselves third. Or is it just the opposite? The honest answer is ... well, you know.