Today's Phoenix New Times has a feature story about Angelica Hernandez, who will graduate today from Arizona State University. A "Distinguished Graduate," she is also a class valedictorian.
Hernandez excelled throughout high school, earning a 4.5 GPA at Carl Hayden as she made a name for herself in the school's famous robotics program. She chose to study mechanical engineering in college because it's a broad major, which allows her to be a "jack of all trades" in engineering. She is interested in pursuing a graduate education in solar energy. New Times
With an educational record and credentials like hers, you'd think graduate schools and engineering companies would be lined up to attract the distinguished student. You would be wrong, because Hernandez is undocumented. She was brought to America by her Mexican mother when she was 9, and despite tremendous odds against her, Angelica will stand today before her peers, instructors, and the community as one of ASU's most successful graduates. Hers is the kind of immigrant success story we used to read about in those Horatio Alger tales. When the immigrants were European.
In his article today Stephen Lemons observes:
Hernandez is precisely the type of student the DREAM Act, reintroduced by United States Senator Richard Durbin yesterday, is supposed to benefit: smart, talented, and likely to contribute much more to American society than she has received ...
Which is the reason you won't see the GOP support the DREAM Act -- because it will foster even more "smart, talented" non-white immigrants. Shit, we can't encourage that!
Take a look at the immigration petri dish called Arizona: everything the old, anglo, crotchety leadership does (just think Senator Russell Pearce or Sheriff Joe Arpaio) is intended to thwart non-white voices. Pearce and his Mexican-bashing cronies are clearly threatened already, and these knuckle-dragging nativists know the Arizona of tomorrow will be much browner than their privileged world. Here's how the "patriotic, conservative Anglos" at VDARE describe this bloodcurdling future:
If "birth rates and other factors" hold steady ... "if" may be only two letters, but it's a very big word...
• If Arizona still has birthright citizenship…
• If there are no deportations…
• If the border remains unguarded…
• If illegals can still find work, because there's no interior enforcement…
• And if, thanks to SB 1070 and similar measures, you don't get Hispanics leaving the state and patriotic, conservative Anglos moving in, well then, of course it's inevitable.
Yep, it's inevitable: brown people! Spanish! Tamales! So to halt or at least delay this terrifying inevitability, let's start by keeping Mexicans out by protecting the border with little-girl-killing Minutemen. For those Hispanics already here, let's rewrite the Constitution so law officers can sweep through neighborhoods or businesses and round up "suspicious" characters; let's intimidate Latinos at the voting booth; let's make it difficult for non-whites to receive healthcare or most other public benefits; let's absofuckinglutely lie about headless bodies, border crime, and "invasions"; let's amend the 14th Amendment to make it say what we want; let's stigmatize undocumented children in our schools; let's create blacklists that keep human rights troublemakers out of the State Capitol; let's pass laws like SB 1070 that say to the world we're a bunch of toothless bigots who want to punish Mexicans, even if that means wrecking the economy.
And of course let's not teach anything in our classrooms that demeans the Great White Story -- or shows the state's Hispanic or indigenous heritage in a favorable light. That means terminating Tucson's Mexican American Studies program (MAS), not because it's training kids to be anglo-hating Marxists, as the old white peckerheads at the Capitol complain, but because it's creating politically aware, educated Hispanic citizens:
[District Superintendent John] Pedicone himself has cited higher AIMS scores and higher graduation rates among those taking Mexican-American studies courses. Such students are three times more likely to go on to college. New Times
And students who are politically aware and active, students who want to learn about their multicultural heritage (which in some Arizona schools represents 90% of students), and students who have experienced injustice but who have also studied the history of civil disobedience in America do stuff like this:
Nope, we can't be having any of that! Which is why the Arizona Department of Education, not exactly flush with funds, anted up $170,000 to audit Tucson's MAS program. The results are due shortly, but I have little doubt the auditors' vocabulary will start with "Marx," include a fair number of "radicals," mention "Alinsky tactics," and naturally remind the old white couples in Sun City that Tucson's schools are training brown kids to "take over."
Smart, involved, enthusiastic, proud, talented students. Exactly the kind the DREAM Act will encourage, exactly the kind ethnic studies programs produce. Which is exactly the reason the GOP intends to squash both programs.