By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
I’ll refer to her as Leticia X.

In gripping testimony, she tells my students at the University of Arizona that it is wrong that she will not be able to attend college next year: “I consider myself a U.S. citizen. It’s the only country I’ve ever known.“

Her symbolic mother is Leticia A. — a student who set the legal precedent in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe in Texas, permitting undocumented students to be able to attend public K-12 schools, without having to pay exorbitant out-of-state tuition.

Today, Leticia X. struggles to change this policy to include K-16 students. If out-of-state fees are exorbitant for out of state K-12 students, the rates are stratospheric for out-of-state college students… generally costing tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

Leticia X is part of a nationwide movement – nearly a decade old – to pass legislation that would permit students such as her, to be able to attend college at in-state rates. It’s called the Dream Act. Most members of Congress support it, but since 2001, they’ve never been able to garner the 60 votes necessary in the Senate to bring it to a full vote (cloture). It even has a controversial provision that was injected into it that would permit students to also qualify for U.S. residency by first going into the military for 2 years. A terrible compromise, but even that has not worked.

It pains me that I cannot publicly identify Leticia X. The irony is that she, like many other Dream students do identify themselves in public. Apparently, they are more trusting of government than I am.

You have to understand, she was making her plea before my students in Arizona – the New South. It’s also the Old South.

Last week, I took my students to witness Operation Streamline. Nothing I told them could prepare them for what they saw. Several left early, crying, unable to continue to witness what passes for a judicial proceeding. Here, at Tucson’s Federal Court, there are daily tax-payer-funded show trials in which 70-80 undocumented migrants are convicted in one hour. It’s the racial element and the shackles around the ankles, waist and hands that shock the conscience. Most defendants are from Mexico or Central America and have been converted into the world’s most dangerous criminals. In one hour, they are tried, convicted and deported or sent to a private prison (Corrections Corporation of America) to the tune of approximately $15 million per month. It is the breakneck speed that profoundly damages the human spirit and the integrity of the courtroom. As one of my students commented: “They’re like cattle being led to the slaughter.”

This is also Joe Arpaio’s state – the Maricopa County Sheriff that is defying the federal government in his insistence on continuing to conduct mass dragnet raids/stops…

But back to Leticia X. Her story is gut-wrenching. She is bright and articulate, and hard-working to a fault. She studies even when she’s sick because she believes she has earned the right to go to college.

She is figuratively, a dream student. She embodies the very idea of: “A Mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

If the law does not change by December, she will not be attending a U.S. college next year.

It is difficult to imagine why anyone would be opposed to seeing her go off to college She knows no other home and barely speaks Spanish.

The larger tragedy is that her story is repeated 65,000 times every year nationwide. There would be many more, but many drop out, not seeing the point of continuing to attend high school.

However, she is undaunted and courageous. She tells me she has no problem with me using her true name. I dare not expose her to the Arpaios and Lou Dobbs of the world.

What I really want to do is call the National Hispanic Scholarship Foundation and ask them why they are opposed to creating a special fund to help the Leticia Xs of this nation? Nothing in the law prevents them from doing so. Perhaps if President Obama himself were to meet her, he would undoubtedly be moved to tears and action. It is hoped that the president remembers that he ran on the promise of change… and that he also won, promising a humane solution to the immigration crisis. Humane? Yes. Leticia X is a full human being.

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•    Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com or PO BOX 85476 – Tucson, AZ 85754

•    NEW AMERICA MEDIA COLUMNS — http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/

•    ARCHIVED COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS — http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
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ThinkProgress: Joe The Plumber Says Immigrants Should Get “The Hell Out Of Our Damn Country”

While protesting government spending at Houston’s Independence Day Tea Party, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher stated that American taxpayer dollars would be best spent on the mass deportation of 12 million undocumented immigrants:

WURZELBACHER: I believe in making sure our country is safe first. I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants. Get them the hell out of our damn country and close the borders down. We can do it. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders? ? That’s just ridiculous.

When you mix RACISM + REPUBLICANISM + IDIOCY — You Get Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher. [ READ MORE ]

Meanwhile, the philandering Donny Deutsch claimed that we should be honoring the “killing machines” in Afghanistan rather than Michael Jackson.

“People who are crying in the streets that don’t know him, they need to maybe get a little bit of a life,” said Deutsch.

Donny boy and “Pig-Bigot” congressman Peter King of New York would get along just fine.

To Much Jackson Hype?

Grand Delusion:

Hannity: Obama “never got asked tough questions about his radical friends and associates, except by me and others”

Laughable! For starters lets look here first, then scour the rest of the blog for numerous instances when President Obama was labeled and smeared with almost everything right-wing racist ding-bats would lay their hands on.

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UGLY Anti-Immigrant Bigot Lou Dobbs: Dobbs falsely claimed Pelosi said “immigration law enforcement is, quote-unquote, ‘un-American.”

| Read More |

Neo-NAZI Klansman Sean Hannity: Obama administration is pushing “the single biggest power grab and move towards socialism in the history of the country“

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A New York Times Editorial

A Catastrophic Silence

   Suffolk County executive
   - Steve Levy [Enlarge]
The killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, on Long Island this month brought with it a cruel blessing. From a shocking crime — an assault by a gang of boys accused of making a hobby of hunting Latinos — came a chance for a stricken, divided community to bind old wounds and to bury anger.

Instead, the moment is collapsing into the same old shouting. Advocates for immigrants are condemning the Suffolk County executive, Steve Levy, as somehow complicit in the killing for his rigid devotion to immigration enforcement. Mr. Levy is lashing back and trying to distribute blame fairly. He wonders, for example, how a gang out of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ could have run free for so long, firing BB’s and hateful slurs at random victims, jumping and punching them for sport.

Why, he asks, were their friends and acquaintances silent? It’s a fair question, but there is another silence Mr. Levy should focus on.

The silence that echoes most painfully is that of the Latino victims of these and other hidden crimes. Mr. Lucero’s death has set loose a flood of stories of abuse and harassment. A police precinct commander lost his job over his handling of two other attacks against Latino men that fatal day, an acknowledgment that in Suffolk, equal protection may not always apply to everyone.

Mourners Grieve for Slain Immigrant

Suffolk is not the only place with hate crimes or fearful immigrants. The same silence ruled in Postville, Iowa, where children worked brutal hours on a slaughterhouse killing floor. It hung over a factory in New Bedford, Mass., that systematically cheated workers of wages and the Louisiana shipyards where legal guest workers were held in modern-day indentured servitude.

The Racist ‘Republican’ Killers Jeffrey Conroy, 17, foreground, and other teens arrested in a hate crime murder, are led out of the Fifth Precinct in Patchogue, N.Y., for arraignment on gang assault charges in connection with the death of a 37-year old immigrant. Police said the seven high school students looking “to beat up some Mexicans” attacked the immigrant from Ecuador who worked in a dry cleaners shop. According to police, Conroy fatally plunged a knife into the man’s chest him during the brawl.

The silence of undocumented immigrants is the catastrophic silence of people taught by legislative harassment and relentless stereotyping to live mute and afraid.

Mr. Levy sees no role for himself in this drama.

‘Since when is enforcing the law seen as something negative and inflammatory?’ he asked his critics this week.

Here is an attempt to explain. — [ READ MORE ]

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References:

1. Grand Jury Indicts 7 Teens in Immigrant Killing — Seven teenagers learned Friday that they had been indicted in the fatal stabbing of an Ecuadorean immigrant who police say was targeted because he was Hispanic, but they must wait to hear the specific charges.

2. Teen Crime Suspect to Face Murder Charges — Police say man was targeted in the killing because he was Hispanic.

3. Welcome to the Action Center for Justice for Marcelo Lucero

4. Key Findings In New Report: Immigrants Contribute $10.6 Billion to Long Island — Long Island WINS released a new report yesterday entitled “Strengthening Long Island: The Economic Contributions of Immigrants to Nassau and Suffolk.”

5. News about Marcelo Lucero — including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

6. Related Content from NYDailyNews.com — Marcelo Lucero

7. Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News — “Number one, the illegal aliens shouldn’t be here. And number two, the culture from which they come is a lot more violent than the USA.” — The O’Reilly Factor, January 15, 2007

A series of ads in Michigan highlight this year’s roughest political attacks: narrowly aimed shots from small groups. They are not coming with the loud, nationally recognized cannon blast of the type launched by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Senator John Kerry in 2004, but, rather, as more stealthy, narrowly aimed rifle shots from smaller groups armed with incendiary material.

The advertisements running here (Macomb County, Michigan) against Mr. Obama come from a group called Freedom’s Defense Fund, a political action committee based in Washington that was formed four years ago and raises money from conservatives around the country. The advertisements have stood out because of the group’s connections — including to its paid consultant, Jerome S. Corsi, the author of the highly negative, largely discredited political biography of Mr. Obama, “Obama Nation” — and what local critics say are their racial overtones…

A Mr. Centanni said said Freedom’s Defense Fund, with relatively scant resources to spread nationally, decided it could have the most impact by focusing its presidential efforts here for tens of thousands.

| Google Maps – Macomb County (Surburbs of Detroit, Michigan | Why Macomb? |

“We feel Obama can’t win the presidency without Michigan and he can’t win Michigan without Macomb,” he said. “We’re relatively small, but we’re trying to be effective and relevant.” | Read More |

   Discredited RACIST-BIGOT Jerome S. Corsi

Despite stating that he had apologized for what was described as a “series of bigoted and hateful posts,” Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation, wass scheduled to appear with host James Edwards on the August 17 edition of The Political Cesspool Radio Show [Republican Hate Radio], which, according to its “Statement of Principles,” “represents a philosophy that is pro-White.” In a blog post, Edwards has stated that “interracial sex is white genocide.”

| Read More |

Email Jerome Corsi: jcorsi@worldnetdaily.com

…..Visit The Southern Poverty Law Center — Intelligence Report For More…..| The Nativists — Profiles of 20 Anti-Immigrant Leaders |

De-Bunked!

1. Debunking Jerome ‘Bigot’ Corsi’s Smear Attack Book: ‘The Obama Nation’
2. Unfit for Publication: Corsi’s The Obama Nation filled with falsehoods.
3. Corsi’s Dull Hatchet — Jerome Corsi’s “The Obama Nation” is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.
4. Jerome Corsi is a Racist
5. Jerome Corsi: How a Racist, Conspiratorial Crank Became a Top GOP Anti-Obama Point Man