Saturday, October 8, 2005

I'm Depressed

This week, I was talking to a kid from Honduras in my after-school program about choosing a high school for next year. I brought up a high school in Queens for new immigrants, which generally do a great job teaching English to immigrant students quickly, since he arrived in the U.S. only a few months ago and speaks no English, and was surprised when he declared that he was not an immigrant because he had residency (i.e. he was here legally).

So this is where the immigration debate in this country is going - all immigrants are seen as law-breakers, and even a newly arrived kid who is not listening to the fanatics in the media and spends all his time (at school and in his neighborhood in New York City of all places) around immigrants from all over the world can pick up on this association.

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