Our government's post-9/11 reactionary immigration policies may keep a few terrorists out of the country, but they serve more to reinforce and strengthen the barriers to the American dream for honest, hard-working people. “Jane” is a student of mine who has excellent grades, exhibits exemplary citizenship and responsibility, and has aspirations to pursue post-secondary education. By my judgment, she would easily do well in a competitive four-year university. Academically she qualifies for Georgia’s HOPE scholarship, which she would absolutely need to be able to afford college. Her family currently lives in very poor conditions and her success is one of the family’s hopes. However, and horribly ironically, the laws of the land pose a barrier to those hopes. “Jane” doesn’t have permanent resident status. She had to get here on a tourist visa. She can’t obtain a student visa because her parents are here. The tourist visa will eventually expire. The scholarship is not available to her. Like immigrants past and present, they came here in search of a better life. But, I must sympathize with her sentiments when she says to me, “you call this a better life? What kind of life is this?” How, then do I as a teacher, encourage students to stay in school and continue their education, holding up the promise of higher education and the opportunities it affords? I would have no integrity if I didn’t come clean to them with the truth, that there are still barriers in America, that there is still systemic inequality and injustice, and that they may not get what they have worked hard for and deserve. Of course I find that even at their young age, they know this already. In my years working with immigrant students, I am the one who has received an education, about where our nation really is in its ability to deliver on its great promises. 200 plus years after the constitution and the bill of rights, 140 years after emancipation, 40 years after the civil rights movement. We still have a ways to go.
10:47:00 PM 
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