I wasn’t sure I heard President Obama right during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, so I double-checked the text of his speech. “One last point about education,” Obama said about a topic on which he spoke at some length. (The text of his speech, when I printed it out, came to 11 pages. Obama may not be one of our greatest presidents, but he sure has heck is one of the most long-winded.)
“Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.”
Obama and I seem to be living in two different realities. Do we send those college and university students who are not American citizens back home, or do they choose to go back home “and compete against us”? And while there may indeed be “hundreds of thousands” of children of “undocumented workers (such people are also called “illegal immigrants”) “excelling” in our schools, there are no doubt hundreds of thousands struggling.
But whether those students are struggling or excelling is beside the point. The question is should American taxpayers foot the bill to educate children of those who’ve broken our laws by entering or remaining in the country illegally?
Doesn’t providing the children of those illegal immigrants a free public education reward their breaking the law, instead of punishing it?
Not in our president’s reality. He continued with a brief reference to the topic of illegal immigration.
“Now I firmly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration,” Obama said. “I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. I know that debate will be difficult and take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who can staff our research labs, start new businesses and further enrich this nation.”
Those “talented, responsible young people” have an option: leave the country, and re-enter legally, the way thousands of other immigrants have done. That’s not Obama’s policy. He wants to give them a free pass and make a mockery of all those Americans who immigrated to this nation legally and became citizens by going through the legal process.
In one breath the president said he wanted to enforce our immigration laws, and then in the next he cavalierly dismissed them. Expelling illegal immigrants is precisely what we do to enforce our immigration laws. Perhaps that’s what we should expect from an administration that busted Arizona’s hump for passing a law designed to help enforce those immigration laws.
As for that business of children of illegal immigrants “(growing) up as Americans and pledg(ing) allegiance to our flag,” the president clearly hasn’t gotten the memo of instances where some of those illegal immigrants – or their supporters – have clearly disrespected our flag.
There was a March, 2006 incident at a California high school where students ran a Mexican flag up the pole with the American flag underneath it: upside down.
That doesn’t smack of allegiance to me, Mr. President.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
