STOPPING DEPORTATION, ONE VALEDICTORIAN AT A TIME?

Los Angeles Times, CA
June 12 2008

The editorial board wrote today that a whole lot of immigration
policy is hitting the enforcement side of the matter, but missing
the big picture:

He may be a reluctant immigration restrictionist, but Michael Chertoff
is remarkably diligent. The secretary of Homeland Security is one of
the Bush administration’s most enthusiastic lobbyists for immigration
reform, willing to highlight the "negative economic consequences" of
tougher enforcement. Yet on items from the border wall to workplace
raids to heavier burdens on employers, Chertoff delivers for the
enforcement-only crowd.

Here’s a small something for the other crowd. Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) introduced a bill to stop the deportation of 17-year-old
Arthur Mkoyan, a high school valedictorian set to go to UC Davis
unless he gets shipped to Armenia. He hasn’t seen his native country
since he was a toddler (and his parents have been seeking asylum
since about that time).

But the fine print, as CNN reports: "Of the 21 private immigration
bills introduced last year, none was enacted. None of the 117
introduced was enacted in 2006. The year prior, 98 were introduced,
and four were enacted."

In other words, Mkoyan can stay, but he can’t get a green card without
the bill passing. As Sacramento Bee columnist Peter Schrag notes,
Mkoyan and other students like him wouldn’t be put in this situation
if the DREAM Act had passed:

Mkoyan is one of the emblems — there are thousands of others — of
a self-defeating immigration policy that prefers to deport talented
young people at a time when the nation faces a desperate need of
skilled workers to replace the millions of baby boomers who are about
to retire….

Passage of the federal Dream Act last year, which would have put
thousands of young men and women on the path to legal status, would
probably have allowed him to stay here. But the act was blocked in
Congress by immigration absolutists who’d rather punish children for
the sins of their parents than cash in on the talent and ambition
they represent.

But Ruben Navarrette Jr. says the law is the law (even if its cruel,
counterproductive, myopic, unnecessary…one could go on), and even if
enforcement-side folks can get a few bones from the federal government,
the other side can’t. But he leaves on a more stinging point, wondering
why so few advocates rushed to defend another student, Jesus Apodaca,
in 2002:

Why the double standard? I believe it’s because, while Mkoyan may not
have a leg to stand on legally, he at least has the benefit of not
being Mexican. Much of the immigration debate is fueled by a fear
of a changing culture, competing languages, an altered landscape,
and what loopy Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist calls the
"colonization" of the United States by Mexican immigrants.

Arthur Mkoyan isn’t considered a party to any of that. For some
people, that makes all the difference. And, in some respects, that’s
the saddest thing about this story.