Day Twenty-five:

Okay, enough whining and self-absorbed diatribes, let's talk politics. Specifically, the DREAM Act. In case you've been too busy keeping up with celebrity gossip and www.damnyouautocorrect.com (best site ever) I'll review DREAM for you.

The proposed legislation simply states that undocumented students (read: illegal immigrants) who attend college or serve in the U.S. Military will be given a ten-year visa and after, if they are in good standing and not dirtbag criminals, they will be granted residency.

When I first heard about DREAM I didn't fully understand it and thought it was simply to draw prospective college students from other countries to the U.S. Now I understand that DREAM is actually for those young adults who are already living here and by most accounts have been living here since they were young children and came here through no fault of their own. These are adults crossing the border and trying to steal jobs and college degrees from us as I know many anti-immigration proponents will assume it to be.

So just consider this for a moment. Your family moves to another country when you are seven. You live in that country for 16 years and never really know any other place as home except this country. Problem is, you're undocumented and could be sent back to a country you don't know and of which you may not even speak the language. This is not your fault, you didn't sneak into this country, you were a child. So now here you are, a young adult, in college, doing well, possible even better than your classmates and when you graduate you . . . what? Get a job washing dishing for under the table pay?

These are not people that should be collecting your garbage. They are college educated and driven to succeed. These are exactly the types of people we should want in our professional communities and serving in our military forces. Sometimes it seems like opponents get so revved up arguing against illegals coming here to take their jobs and effectively make their lives worse, that they forget about the possibility that they might actually make things better. Having smart, driven, and grateful people around is never a bad thing.

I'd much rather have the illegal Ecuadorian girl with the double major working in some professional capacity than bussing tables. Because make no mistake, they aren't going anywhere. Round up as many as you like, guard the border with your Bud swilling buddies, pick-up trucks and hunting rifles. We're always going to have illegal immigrants in this country and attempting to get into this country. So maybe a better solution is to make sure those that are here can help make our nation great again. It also wouldn't kill us to just stop being such obnoxious assholes about immigrants when every damn one of us is a descendent of just that. And if you check your history, I'm pretty sure you'll find that the "natives" that were here when Europeans first starting crossing the border weren't so happy about it either . . . and look what happened to them.

So yeah, I'm okay if they have a DREAM and you should be too.