Posted on 04/07/2013 11:05:59 AM PDT by kristinn
At 18, Sergio Santamaría was in a place most American high school seniors dream of. Thanks to a financial need-based scholarship, he'd gotten an excellent education from an elite prep school, The Bishop's School in La Jolla, Calif. He'd been on the honor roll, served as a student ambassador tour guide, and had also been accepted to two well-ranked colleges: The George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and Fordham University, in New York City.
But Mr. Santamaría had been brought into the United States from Mexico as a baby. He'd been undocumented his entire life, and the vulnerability of an uncertain future weighed heavily on him.
Late in the evening on his graduation day, May 31, 2011, he took an irreversible step. He self-deported.
SNIP
Santamaría says he was trying to do the right thing by following the rules.
"I've always said that there is a proper way to do things for a reason," he says. "I am the most indecisive person you will meet, yet this decision was one of the least difficult."
He does admit, however, that "I now have a real sense as to why there is so much opposition to legalization.
"Let's say I start the process tomorrow through a family member to gain documentation, and then tomorrow Congress passes an IRCA 2.0 that legalizes people in the US and would have legalized me," he posits, referring to the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that offered amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants living in the US.
"Yes, it would feel like a slight. After all, I did the 'right' thing…. And yet now, I am the 'fool' who decided to leave and follow the correct procedural avenues instead of staying undocumented, living in the shadows."
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
My daughter-in-law was a green-card holder from Calgary and took her the exact amount of time. Living in Canada she was bought up believing it was ‘’racist’’ to deny citizenship to people even if they broke the law entering someone else’s country. It didn’t take her long after being here for a little while and working as a bank-teller, watching illegals scam the system and cry ‘’racism’’ when they’re caught for her to realize how much she had been lied to.
“My daughter-in-law was a green-card holder from Calgary and took her the exact amount of time”
She got in like me, 2007 and just like your DIL, she’s a convert. It’s 5 x harder now to immigrate to canada than it was 5 years ago and unlike here in America, they only allow people with actual education and skills to help the country...unlike the open border policy for illegals here.
Yeah but don’t they love lecturing us on how ‘’racist’’ it is to deny ‘’undocumented’’ immigrants the right to break in here.
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