The current "possible" detante with Congress re Immigration Reform is multi-dimensional, even though it usually is couched in terms of 'closing the border leaks' between America and Mexico. Today's San Francisco Chronicle has a front-page story, titled, "UC student goes public with bold Dream Act case", that helps to illumine the problem.
24 year old Terence Park, a South Korean by birth, is a biostatistics major who heads UC Berkeley's math club. He also is an undocumented immigrant, or as some in the Republican Party prefer, "an illegal alien". Park is one of an estimated 2.1 million kids whose undocumented parents brought their young children to America when they came; Park was 10 years old when his divorced mother brought her children to San Diego. His 'rags to riches' story is reminiscent of Mark the Matchboy from Horatio Alger's pen nearly one hundred fifty years ago. Terence has been admitted to Yale for graduate school, but that state hasn't yet implemented anything approaching California's state Dream Act, which allows undocumented students meeting certain qualifications to apply for college financial aid benefits -- which is how Terence was able to complete his Berkeley degree.
With help and encouragement from Steve Jobs' widow Laurene and Hollywood director David Guggenheim (think Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman), Park decided to risk making his story public in order to help advance the cause for the Dream Act to be passed this year. It is risky, but this kid has true grit, as the old movie title would describe it.
The irony for America is that immigrants -- whether via Green Card, visa, rightful ('earned') immigration, or 'undocumented -- have been disproportionately those who've built the new companies, developed many of the leading patents, products, and processes upon which "American Ingenuity" is allegedly grounded. Granted, they have tended to be Asian, or Indian, or Eastern European rather than Latino, but it is to a very significant extent, all part of the same puzzle.
This is a different case, and a different cause, than that of ALearn, which I described a couple of days ago. But it is related, in the sense that Park carries the same status -- illegal -- for any of the myriad opportunities available to "Americans" that 'outsiders' (no matter what their math scores are) cannot partake. And somehow, that doesn't feel right.
Do you agree?
No comments:
Post a Comment