We'd like to offer our support to the brave young people sitting in at Senator John McCain's Tucson's office -- Tania Unzueta, Lizbeth Mateo, Yahaira Carrillo, Mohammad Abdollahi. Raúl Alcaraz -- four of whom were arrested yesterday and three of whom face deportation because they are undocumented.
The students support the DREAM Act, a bill that would offer legalization for illegal immigrant students who were brought to the United States as children by their parents. We support the DREAM Act, and if elected to Congress, we will sign on as a co-sponsor and vote for it.
As a college teacher in Arizona, Florida and New York since 1975, we've taught students from more than one hundred countries -- currently we're teaching students from Mexico, Mali, Myanmar and Montenegro, and that's just the M's! -- and of course their immigration status is none of our concern except that we want to make sure all have the right to continue their education without any problems.
Since this is not some bullshit highly-political attack-dog campaign, we'd like to commend the incumbent Republican representative in AZ-06, Congressman Jeff Flake, who met with Arizona Dream Act Coalition last year and promised to vote for the bill.
We've got a lot of problems with Jeff Flake's votes and positions, but he's correct - and like the brave students, pretty courageous since he's the member of a state political party whose raison d'etre seems to be immigrant-bashing - to support the DREAM Act. It's the right thing to do.
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Today's New York Times has an article on the first national news page, "A Generation Gap Over Immigration," which highlights the same age divide on the immigration issue that we see on gay rights:
In the wake of the new Arizona law allowing the police to detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, young people are largely displaying vehement opposition — leading protests on Monday at Senator John McCain’s offices in Tucson, and at the game here between the Florida Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Meanwhile, baby boomers, despite a youth of “live and let live,” are siding with older Americans and supporting the Arizona law.
This emerging divide has appeared in a handful of surveys taken since the measure was signed into law, including a New York Times/CBS News poll this month that found that Americans 45 and older were more likely than the young to say the Arizona law was “about right” (as opposed to “going too far” or “not far enough”). Boomers were also more likely to say that “no newcomers” should be allowed to enter the country while more young people favored a “welcome all” approach. . .
The generation gap is especially pronounced in formerly fast-growing states like Arizona and Florida, where retirees and new immigrants have flocked — one group for sun, the other for work.
In a new report based on census figures titled “The State of Metropolitan America,” Mr. Frey found that Arizona has the largest “cultural generation gap,” as he calls it, between older Americans who are largely white (83 percent in Arizona’s case) and children under 18 who are increasingly members of minorities (57 percent in Arizona’s case).
An accompanying chart shows the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area ranking #1 in the gap between children who are white and of residents over 65 who are white. The Tucson metro area is tied for #2.
In Phoenix, only 44% of kids are white; in Tucson, only 39% of kids are white. But in Phoenix, a whopping 85% of seniors are white; in Tucson, 79% of seniors are white.
The great news for Arizona: All of these bigoted baby boomers and xenophobic geezers will be dead sooner than later!
¡Adios, Russell Pearce!
