What does the United States have in common with Cuba, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Uganda, and other bastions of human rights around the world?
They are: Cuba, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United States, Venezuela, and Yemen
They are: Cuba, China, Egypt, Iran, Jamaica, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United States, and Yemen
We, in the United States, like to think of ourselves as an "advanced" country and a democracy, where all are created equal, but when it comes to banning homosexuals in the military and using the death penalty, the company we keep is antithetical to democracy.
John McCain, the Republican, Baptist Senator of Arizona, has done it again. He's contradicted his younger, more principled self in his desperate bid to win reelection in the face of of Tea Party pressure, and this time, the lives of young people, who were raised and educated in the U.S.A., people as American than you and me, are at risk.
McCain pulled his support from the DREAM Act, which would offer a path to citizenship for young adults who were brought to the U.S.A. as children by their parents, who were raised in the U.S.A, and who have graduated from high school and seek or have received a college education in the U.S.A. These children were too young to willfully break any U.S. law, when brought over the border. (You can see which senators voted for or against the DREAM Act last time it was up for cloture in 2007 by clicking here. McCain, who supported the legislation at the time, was not present for the important vote.)
These young adults, who have lived their lives in the U.S., now face deportation to a nation of which they have few or no memories, only because they were born there, something they share in common with McCain, who was born in Panama, while his dad was stationed there.
The students arrested are members of DreamActivist.org, which is fighting for the rights of undocumented students. Here is the link to Dream Activist's YouTube channel, where you can hear the stories of undocumented students and learn how to support them.
Mohammed Alibelik-Abdollani, one of the arrested activists, is featured in an embedded video below. His parents brought him here from Iran. He is gay and faces deportation to Iran where homosexuals can get the death penalty. (346 were executed in 2008.) He's risking death to stand up for what is right, to challenge the injustices of the American Dream that have been tainted by fear and racism.
These young adults are as American and you and me. Watch the videos below. As college graduates, they have a far better vocabulary than the uneducated American masses that preach hatred and fear of immigrants.
Senator McCain understands the students’ frustrations, but elections have consequences and they should focus their efforts on the President and the Democrats that control the agenda in Congress.
And, to blame the President and the Democrats? Please. The Democrats are at the mercy of the filibustering Republican minority. They don't have the votes for cloture on anything right now, and with moderate Republicans, like McCain, hypocritically opposing legislation they once supported in a desperate wooing of the Tea Party, nothing is getting through the Senate. But, yes, blame the Democrats, McCain. Don't take responsibility for your own actions. The fact is that both Democrats and Republicans have failed these young Americans, who face deportation to a foreign land that they ony know only by birth.
"The DREAM Act would fix one of the clearest examples of America's nonsensical immigration laws," said Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice, an immigrant advocacy organization. "For too long, high school valedictorians and college graduates have been unable to fully live up to their potential."
But, John McCain would rather throw them under the Straight Talk Express.
An editorial in the New York Times challenges both Democrats and Republicans for having failed on immigration reform and failing the hundreds of thousands of youth, who despite their places of birth, are American. Here's a piece of the editorial:
Who else has shown such courage in the long struggle for immigration reform? Not Mr. McCain, who ditched his principled support of rational immigration legislation to better his odds in a close re-election campaign against a far-right-wing opponent. Not President Obama, who has retreated to lip service and vagueness in his calls for reform. Not his administration. The Justice Department has stood by as a civil-rights coalition — the American Civil Liberties Union, Maldef, the N.A.A.C.P., the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and others — has swiftly sued to block the Arizona law.
Other supposed defenders of immigrants, Democrats in Congress, have lost their voices. Senators Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez and Harry Reid, mindful of November elections and frustrated Latino voters, have unveiled a blueprint for immigration reform that parrots Republican talking points about clamping down the southern border and treating the undocumented as a swelling tide of criminals.
Good immigration reform needs a good bill, and the administration and the president and Democratic leaders haven’t yet offered or convincingly fought for one. The fight for reform is stalled.
