Picking on immigrants across the fruited plain

[Derechos]

Op-ed on the hypocrisy of immigration crack-downs including penalizing their children.

On seeing supermarket shoppers eagerly sign the Dream Act petition

We stopped at a supermarket in Baltimore County to buy some apples and peaches, possibly picked by undocumented immigrants employed by an orchard somewhere across the fruited plain. At the entrance to the store, a woman sat at a table offering an anti-Dream Act petition to Friday evening shoppers who appeared eager to sign it. They want to repeal a new Maryland law that would allow in-state college tuition to the undocumented children of undocumented immigrants.

Of course, most of those kids, while not citizens, have been through our high schools already. In fact, the Dream Act only applies to Maryland residents who, starting in fall 2005, attended one of our high schools for at least three years and got a diploma.

In addition, they have to prove their parents paid Maryland taxes for at least three years and that they're still paying taxes

They have to file an affidavit pledging to apply for permanent residency.

They have to register with the U.S. Selective Service System.

No matter how bright or prepared for a four-year college they might be, they have to attend a community college first. (Students who went through a community college, starting with the fall semester of 2010, are also eligible; they have to meet all the requirements stated above, including the bit about their parents being taxpayers.)

Dream Act opponents don't always mention all the conditions attached to it, so I do every chance I get.

See link for rest of op-ed - http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-rodricks-dreamact-20110629,0,6178890.column

[elleng]

1. Good one. Thanks

'the American supermarket: It sells, and presumably makes a profit from, immigrant-picked produce. The rest of us look the other way when it comes to the "legality" of what we buy and eat. We know that immigrants (legal or otherwise) are in the food production chain, and that their presence keeps the prices down. They are in the servant class, too; they keep many American homes, hotels, hospitals and businesses clean and looking superb from the curb. They cook meals; they bus tables. They pay into the Social Security trust fund — by the hundreds of billions, according to its chief actuary — that we're counting on for retirement.

So, crackdowns on this undocumented underclass — seeking them out and deporting them, or depriving their children of a break in the cost of education — highlights one of the great hypocrisies in our midst: We accept the contributions undocumented workers quietly make to our lives, while wishing they weren't here. And some of us are all to eager to penalize their kids.'

Have recently begun to think about/realize dependence of U.S. (and the rest of Western civilization) on 'slavery,' 'slave wages.' Has ALWAYS/HISTORICALLY been the case, no different now. This piece focuses on 'home grown,' as does recent Georgia law, but its all over the world, NO COINCIDENCE that so many goods and services are, more and more, provided in China and LESS EXPENSIVE labor markets, always being sought by manufacturers.

[mk2guy7355]

2. self-delete