I’ve had a hard time processing this material because it makes me so upset. As someone who worked in Fort Worth Texas with English Language Learners, I worked with students who I’m sure had family members who were not in the US legally. I didn’t hear many stories from my students about where they were from, or where their family was from… I had one 16 year old pregnant student who was staying with an aunt so that her baby would have US Citizenship… She was smart, hopeful, and had made some bad choices. She wanted to stay away from the dangerous elements from back home in Mexico, get her high school degree, and be a good mom. She believed that her future had to be away from her home town.
I don’t have a good solution for this problem. I wish I did! I wish I could wave a magic wand and just fix this for all the kids and their families… Some of them should stay here, and some of them should go to their parents’ home country… I don’t think it is fair for children who grew up with the US as their home to be permanently punished for their parents’ choices, even if they were illegal choices. I think this is a way more complicated problem than a lot of people with simple straightforward answers believe it is. Most of the dreamers are so afraid of getting caught and being deported that they rarely broke the law, or got noticed at school. Their goal was to hunker down and just pass through the system without any ripples. However, there are always students who mess up and make bad choices…
I read an article about a woman who is teaching in Houston- she has a secondary education degree from a university down there and has been teaching for a few years, maybe 3, and she is one of the dreamers. She is afraid to tell her students that she might be forced to leave. One of her co-workers who is also a dreamer already left because he didn’t want to be forced to leave.