Editor-In-Chief
McALLEN, Texas - Back during the early days of this country, it wasn't rare to see Americans welcome foreign workers and scholars. It was imported Chinese coolies who built the national railroads and, a bit later, it was German rocket scientists who created America's Space and Weapons program. In between came the waves of poor, then-hated Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians and a sprinkling of everybody else on the planet. It's who we are, and always have been - a nation of New Americans.
Now comes the flare-up over a proposal to incorporate some of our brightest young minds into the national conversation. Congress is currently entertaining the Dream Act - aka the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. It is federal legislation first introduced in 2001 and most recently re-introduced in the House of Representatives in March of last year. As being considered, the bill would provide certain illegal and deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools the opportunity to earn conditional residency. They, however, must be of good moral character, must have come to this country illegally as minors, and must have been here continuously and illegally for at least five years. They must also agree to serve in the military.
Those requirements would get them temporary residency for a six-year period. A bigger challenge would have them earn a college degree. And, asisde from the military requirement, they risk being dropped for the simplest of violations, something that would immediately return them to the immigration status the alien had prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status.
So, what's the big deal? We have made greater allowances for lesser immigrants.
And at a time when our own citizens are failing miserably on scholastic tests, it's good to know some good, fertile minds want to join our journey. These are, from what we have seen and read, accomplished students. What's so wrong - or threatening - about allowing successful students to raise the bar for our own pitiful failures? Doesn't UT-Brownsville allow for concurrent enrollment that has its students doing remedial work at smaller, less-stressful Texas Southmost College? I'd trade one of our strugglers for a Dream Act kid any day of the week. Perhaps it'll spark something positive.
It is true that many of our citizens cannot find jobs, and that would be something to think about - if our unemployed really wanted to get off their sheltered asses and work. To understand our current economical woe as it relates to employment, well, you'd need to review your history. This "Hey, there are no jobs, man" crap is, for many, a road-weary handy excuse. This country has gone through countless times when Americans had trouble finding jobs. Now, it is just a reason to sit at home and watch television. Americans who should be out cold-calling for jobs are instead more interested in walking to the employment office, where they will sit for long, boring hours, waiting to file unemployment compensation forms. Filing those things is now an industry from coast-to-coast.
Citizenship should not grant you the right to receive unemployment checks of more than $1,000-a-month for 99 weeks. That is outrageous! Six weeks, maybe? 99 weeks? That is almost two years. No other country in the whole damned world does that. 99 weeks. I don't even want to do the math on what it means in dollars.
Here's what I'd agree to: Six weeks of unemployment benefits, with documentable proof of an active job search. $200-a-month in food stamps for the same period. And if a recipient absolutely had to be extended, in the case of a nuclear family (not Gay/Lesbian) with young children, for example, then that recipient would be required to give his community 20 hours of service every week while drawing the additional benefits. Such work would include picking up trash from all neighborhoods and highway frontage roads, doing custodial work at City Hall and local public schools, washing city government vehicles, caring for landscaping on local government property and maybe even driving a school bus for no pay.
Harsh?
Perhaps.
But it strikes us that too many Americans are on the government dole. Hard-working citizens are not getting a damned thing in return. Many of these men who claim to have walked the concrete sidewalks looking for jobs from sun-up to sundown for the past 20 years have given up. Let them give-up.
DREAM Act kids are here, and they want to work. They want to contribute. We would be stupid to say no to these latest New Americans...
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