Recently I had the opportunity to see what awaits the USA raised children who, under present executive order, will be returned to Mexico starting in March. Some 800,000 children brought, for the most part, by their parents as very young children.
First was Megan, a 16-year-old teenager in San Miguel working as a desk clerk in a B and B. She was born in Texas, a high school freshman in, she told me, the top 10th percent of her class. Ten months earlier she had returned with her father, with whom she had been living, she is not in school. “I don’t speak academic Spanish,” she explained and the school system didn’t know what to do with her, suggesting middle school. I would suspect her speaking ability far exceeds her reading and writing ability. Mexico is certainly not prepared to educate these 800,000 American children!
Guadalajara doesn’t want them, another individual told us. He returned to Mexico after living 17 years in the U.S. with his daughter. She was not allowed to attend the public schools. A cab driver, he worked extra hours so she could go to a private school. Now a college student studying physical therapy, she plans to return to the U.S. as soon as she graduates.
The prospects for these children are dire. The “Dreamer Act” is being used as a “bargaining chip” where the rules keep changing and nothing is happening – 800,000 individuals, the size of eight Duluths! They did nothing wrong except follow or be carried by their parents. If we cannot care for what happens to them we have indeed lost our moral compass. Treating them as object is morally reprehensible. And as for “human rights” I suggest we drop that banner real quick, we have become offenders!
If this is a concern, what can we do? The more people call their congressmen and women the more they are inclined to act — they do want to be re-elected. And calling is taking action, a healthy way of dealing with the stress of living in today’s world.
Pat Zankman
Grand Marais
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