My Personal Dream Act

                                                      My Personal Dream Act

I’ve been reading a lot about the Dream Act lately and how groups of college age immigrants have convinced President Obama to come out in favor of allowing them to stay in the US on temporary visas so they can finish their college educations and/or military service.  I applaud what they’ve achieved and hope the President can convince Congress to make the Dream Act permanent.

            I know many politicians believe that they now need immigrants, especially Hispanics, if they want to get elected in the future.  But that should not be the reason to court young immigrants at this time. 

            I worked with high school age immigrants during the entire time I taught English in the Bronx (almost forty years.)  I can attest, without hesitation, that they were the most serious and ambitious students I ever taught.  Most were older and more mature than their American born classmates and had spent years studying English in their native countries before they came to New York.  Others had been brought here by their parents illegally and had spent all their years in the New York City public schools.

            Most of them shared the same goal: they wanted to go to college in the United States.  One of my Chinese students was so smart that he was programmed for my senior honors class.  We were reading Macbeth.  He used his Chinese/English dictionary constantly to translate Shakespearean English so he could understand the poetry and participate in the discussions and homework assignments assiduously.  He graduated with a high average and was accepted at Princeton where he ended up being a math major.  He eventually returned to New York and became a social studies teacher in the New York City public schools.  He called me when he started working to thank me for being his favorite English teacher and asked me if I would help his future wife, a new immigrant from China, learn English.

            That’s why it amazes me when some people say that immigrants are just taking jobs away from U.S. citizens and collecting welfare from the government for health and housing benefits.  My distant relatives were either immigrants or the children of immigrants.  And my generation was the first to go to college.  My parents also grew up in an era (the depression) that was much worse economically than today’s recession.  I was a child when FDR was still President.  I’ll never forget how my father cried when he heard on the radio about his death in 1945.  So I was just one generation away from being an immigrant.  I always told me students this story when they complained about immigrants taking their jobs away.

            People who follow history or are humane enough to care about other human beings should know better.