Politics With Youngest....

I get updates of Youngest's homework assignments daily.  Yesterday, I saw that for his government class, he had to write a persuasive argument regarding his feelings on the Obama amnesty policy regarding illegal immigrants.  Now, mind you, I am not well versed in this policy that Obama's trying to pass, but I do have my own opinions regarding illegal citizens, so I was curious as to his stand on the subject.

(***AND PLEASE do not take it upon yourself to try and educate me.  That's not what this post's about.****)

Apparently, his 12 year old self is vehemently against it, but has little more than generic basics to back up his opinion. So I thought I'd suggest some personal points he could add to his argument.

Points like when Tony moved here (at 10) the family did so legally.  That his mother felt so strongly about her sons not having to enlist in the Portuguese army at 18 for their 2 years of service, that she uprooted her whole life and moved thousands of miles away.  They had to take the jobs that had been lined up for them and live where the family had chosen for them.  They also had to be sponsored before coming, meaning that someone that lived here already (his grandmother) had to set everything up for them before coming. They had to LEARN THE LANGUAGE. It was not easy, but they worked hard. But, that challenge allowed them to become a functioning part of our society. Just like my great, great grandparents did when they came here legally, and his great (X3) grandparents when they came from Italy. Immigration is what this country is built on. A legal process, that's not supposed to be easy, but one that helps ensure those coming here truly want to be here for the right reasons.  I then told him that when people come here illegally, they often take advantage of the social structure we have here, and when there is no accountability (staying employed, following the rules) it's easy to lose sight of what this country's foundation was built on.

He was listening... thinking... I could see the wheels turning....

Then I started thinking of my time spent in south Florida.  I have told him many times about the protests that happened when Elian Gonzalez arrived in Miami from Cuba.  I told him how people protested sending him home by protesting and even  lying down on I95, stopping traffic.  And while he was eventually sent back to Cuba, so many wash up immigrants were allowed to stay, and settled into migrant worker jobs.  They did not pay taxes and worked for far less than US citizens making it hard for documented workers to get hired in the construction fields.  In many cases they did not have permanent houses and lived in substandard conditions, so that when a natural disaster happened, similar to Hurricane Andrew that killed thousands, many of the migrant workers were buried in mass graves with no way of identifying them or notifying their families because of their illegal status.

This was good... his eyes weren't glossed over yet....

So I told him that it's not always that easy though.  Not every immigrant comes here to steal jobs, escape their home land, or send all their money back to their home country.  Some, like my friend's brother, came here from Canada on a student visa.  When it was over, he just didn't go back.  He worked as a bartender, lived in the same apartment (so no one even noticed he wasn't documented anymore) and had a nice life.  He wasn't looking to cause trouble, he just didn't have a life back home.  He had a life here, spent his money here, and supported his community here. Which didn't make it right that he stayed, but there wasn't really anything wrong with it either.... except that it wasn't legal.

And finally, he piped up "BUT THAT'S AGAINST THE LAW."

And of course, I agreed.  But so is speeding, driving yourself to the DMV to renew your expired license, and posting a photo of someone on Facebook without asking them first. There are lots of things that are against the law, not all of them means you are a bad person.  And here we were, the two of us, discussing the human side of government politics.  Surely he had some new information that he could add to his argument to make it a bit more persuasive, more personal, more than just his opinion.

His argument is nearly finished.  I asked him if he had thought about anything I had told him.  He looked at me, and smiled.  I asked if he added any personal points to his original essay.

Nope.

His entire argument?

"You can't become a citizen if you break the law.  And being illegal is breaking the law."

*sigh*