How many reports have we read in the local press of youth, whether legal or illegal, whose parents have abused or abandoned them?
The Daily Breeze reported about one high-profile student in Lennox who could not go to Harvard and pursue advanced studies because he was not a citizen. He has also been unable to secure comparable employment because of his illegal status.
He admitted his relief that the federal government will no longer detain and deport law-abiding individuals under thirty, brought into this country at a young age, who are not citizens. What recourse, however, can President Obama provide for this young man and many others who are struggling barely to get by in a country where they are not legal residents?
Has anyone taken the time to consider the rash, insensitive, and ultimately unforeseen consequences of illegal parents bringing their children into this country? Furthermore, the local school districts are not doing these children any good by letting matriculate in local schools, where the diploma that they earn means very little beyond acknowledging that they have received a substandard education in the local public school.
Parents cannot complain about the poor schooling which many of their children receive because they are in this country illegally and have no individual legal standing to dispute with local officials.
Amnesty has created an enabling factor which ushers in more illegal immigrants, perpetuating an underclass of youth who cannot get ahead in a country that is not theirs by dint of their compromised legal status.
The recent Time Magazine cover "We are Americans" is a sham and a farce. No matter how long an individual has lived in this country, to assume that citizenship can be conferred on someone merely as proxy for a length of time only erodes the value of citizenship and the inherent power of an individual citizen to file a grievance and petition the government for redress of any wrongdoing. ""American" is matter of birth or naturalization, one of respecting the legacies of individual liberty, constitutional rule, and common law. The legal culture of individual empowerment means much to those who languish in impoverished countries where the corruption of the state has outpaced the self-care of the citizen.
How much longer will individual media consumers continue to weep over isolated cases of minority neglect yet overlook the majority source of these issues: the lack immigration laws in this country while enable parents to enter this country illegally, taking with them their young, precognitive children, who then suffer the fear and reprisal of law enforcement in later years?
The irresponsibility of parents bringing their children into this country is an outright scandal. The blame must rest with the irresponsible mothers and fathers who insist on breaking the law in order to live in this country. Not with the individual voters, not with Congressional leaders who are justifiably vocal about these matters, but with the parents themselves lies a great deal of the blame.
The emotional element cannot blunt the long-term realities. Illegal immigration hurts everyone, and to argue that a partial amnesty will solve this problem only increases the likelihood of more irresponsible parents bringing their children into fraught political conditions, where fathers can easily abandon their wives and children without consequences, where young people have no authority or protection to safeguard their present upbringing or their future calling.
This nation must have borders, a clean and comprehensive naturalization process which respects those who have come to this country and wish to join the United States as legal residents.
Amnesty alone is not just an eroding factor in public safety, one which grants unlimited license to marauding gangs while straitjacketing individuals who fear reprisal from the state if they report themselves as victims; amnesty is a problem which erodes the ties of the family, where parent command little respect over their children, where spouses can abuse and abandon one another without redress or recourse for their children?