Immigration reform hits close to home

I take a personal interest in immigration reform. My daughter-in-law is a Latina, a native of El Salvador.
She’s done everything the “right” way as far as U.S. immigration laws are concerned, though she was put through the wringer at various steps along the way in becoming a legal resident.
She and my son Tim met while he was serving in the U.S. Peace Corps in El Salvador. I had always feared some doe-eyed village girl would snare him.
Instead, she’s a sophisticated city girl with advanced degrees. When they met she had a high profile marketing job at a television station.
Today she works at H&R Block headquarters in downtown Kansas City, where she specializes in Latino outreach through social media. Her position requires frequent travel to major metropolitan areas. Her income tops Tim’s as a high school English teacher.
In essence, she’s a credit to the United States in her efforts to bridge the two cultures.
She also is very grateful for her situation and though she loves her home country neither she or Tim feel it is a good place to raise a family. Widespread government corruption and the prevalence of gangs erode any sense of stability there. It’s still a country where only the privileged receive an education.
Tim’s village remains without running water or utilities.

THE PLIGHT of Central America made the headlines last summer when thousands of children and their mothers made their way to the U.S. border to escape the corruption and brutality rampant in primarily Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
El Salvador has the highest rate of homicides against women and girls in the world. Guatemala ranks third. Ninety-five percent of these murders end in impunity.
Many are now stuck in limbo as they wait in the immigration centers to see whether their cases merit asylum. The backlogged court system is ill-equipped to handle this mass influx of immigrants made only more difficult by their lack of legal representation and rudimentary English.
The estimated 70,000 refugees are a fraction of the 11 million illegal aliens who live and work in the United States.
In his address Thursday night, President Obama did not address their situation. Instead, he spoke about creating a pathway to legal status for 5 million unauthorized immigrants, most of whom are parents of children born here.
“You can come out of the shadows,” he said.
Oddly enough, it’s my son Tim, and not Violeta, who most frequently encounters unauthorized immigrants. They are the parents of a large majority of his students at Wyandotte High.
Tim makes a point of visiting the homes of each of his students at the beginning of the school year or when a student is struggling. His command of Spanish is a valuable asset in such visits.
To a one, the elders have come north to provide a better life for their families. The risk of being discovered by authorities, they say, is worth it if it means their children can grow up safe and with an opportunity for an education.

PRESIDENT OBAMA is particularly well suited to address immigration. At times, he himself has been made to feel like a foreigner in his native land due to his skin color and foreign-sounding name. He knows the humiliation and damage of racial profiling first-hand.
We’re better than that, Obama says, and it also shuts the door to our possibilities as a country.
I agree.