Sunday, June 03, 2007

Those "Undocumented Workers" Are Actually College Students!

Really!

At 23, Mariana should be carefree. She is finishing up her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been accepted to a master's program at Harvard University's education school.

But life is not so simple for Mariana, who insisted that only her first name be published because she is illegally in the United States and worries she could be deported to Guatemala, where she was born.

"I'm even afraid of eating an apple in the library because I'm afraid of getting caught," she said.

Mariana also worries about how she will pay her tuition and what kind of work she will get after she completes school. "What happens next? Without a work permit, how do you exercise your degree?" she said during a recent interview.

Mariana is among an estimated 50,000 undocumented students in U.S. colleges today. These students would be among the people who would benefit from a part of an immigration bill that the Senate plans to resume work on this week.

Poor Mariana. She's only one person in 50,000 who is here illegally. But she's really, really smart and might find a cure for cancer someday if we'd only let her stay!

The article goes on in a very sympathetic vein, explaining how Mariana and others like her didn't make the choice to come to America illegally. They were brought here by their parents and, for some of them, this is the only home they've ever known.

I'm sympathetic, too. If we were only talking about 50,000 people--people who are well-educated and most likely to become tax-paying, law-abiding, grass-mowing-and-edging citizens--then more people might be supportive of them. The problem is that 50,000 is a tiny subset of the 12 million estimated illegal aliens in this country. And the vast majority of those illegal aliens aren't eating apples in college libraries, studying medicine or pre-law; they are low-skilled, uneducated people whose primary interest in being in the U.S. is to earn money to send home to family members. In short, they are here because this is where the money is, not because they are interested in being American citizens.

One of the arguments I see frequently by pro-illegal immigration crowds is the idea that "we were all immigrants once." Indeed, my own mother was an immigrant. The difference is that most of those people came here to contribute to this country and embraced it. But the illegal immigrants of today are economic immigrants. Their interest is in making what they can to support people somewhere else. There's nothing wrong with that; it's a fact of life.

What I don't like is the attempt by pro-illegal immigration types to highlight people most likely to get sympathy, like college students. It would be one thing if Mariana was your typical illegal alien. Instead, she's just a tiny fraction of the millions of illegals we have.