News-Record.com

Children are not responsible for the actions of their parents. If children grow up in the US, attend schools here, and know no other country then they should be accepted into society. They should not be punished for what their parents did, but given the same opportunities as children born in this country. US immigrations laws need to be reformed to address many issues.

I grew up in a foreign country and graduated from a foreign high school. My oldest son was born abroad. My childhood memories do not include baseball games, Happy Meals, Fourth of July fireworks, Thanksgiving turkeys or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in class. I came to this country as the young mother of an 18-month-old, following my American-born husband to make his home mine. And because I was white, came from a preferred European country, and arrived 35 years ago, I had an easy path to legal residency and eventual citizenship.

Yet what I took for granted is out of reach for many who are far more American than I will ever be. Every year, American high schools hand out diplomas to about 65,000 undocumented immigrant students whose parents brought them to the US as babies or toddlers. These young people have grown up steeped in US culture, have been taught this nation’s history and values, have worked hard to succeed academically and are now eager for more opportunities to contribute to their country and their communities. These young people are American in every way except one: they lack the piece of paper that would give them immigrant status and a path towards earning citizenship. Under current law, there is no avenue available for these young people to adjust their status without having to leave the only country they know for three to ten years or more while their applications are being processed, and no guarantee if they do that they would ever be allowed to return home.

A commonsense policy response for these young people is the DREAM Act. This legislation, which was stalled in 2007 but could easily be taken up by the next Congress, would give conditional legal status to undocumented immigrants now younger than 30 who graduated from American high schools, came to the United States before they were 16 and have lived in the country for at least five years and have no criminal record. After successfully completing two years of college, trade school, or military service, these promising young people would become eligible to apply for permanent residency.

Children should not be punished for their parents’ actions. Yet our current enforcement-only response to a hopelessly broken immigration system leaves only one course for these young people: living permanently in the shadows or exile from the country they love and the only home they have ever known. We must find a better way to align our immigration policies with our human values. Many laws and little justice is not the American way.