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The Dream Act: The Country Which Forgets Its Children Renounces Its Future

On March 24, 1976, a military coup took over power in Argentina and gained control of the government, kidnapping and murdering thousands and sending many more…

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On March 24, 1976, a military coup took over power in Argentina and gained control of the government, kidnapping and murdering thousands and sending many more to detention centers. The word “Desaparecidos” (“disappeared”) became a word whispered with fear in Argentinean homes, a word used to identify those kidnapped who never returned. The children of those kidnapped also “disappeared”, later to resurface as the “children” of military families and others loyal to the new regime.

Despite the charged atmosphere of fear and repression, a small group of brave women—mothers—began to gather, showing up at the Plaza de Mayo each Thursday to share their limited information about the whereabouts of their loved ones. Because the police refused to allow them to stand together in groups of more than three, they began to march around the pyramid in the Plaza, using white handkerchiefs around their heads to identify themselves. To date, this same group, now the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, continue to meet and march together each Thursday in places like the Plaza in front of the Rose Palace in Buenos Aires and the Plaza in the ski/vacation resort of Bariloche, demanding that their grandchildren, the children of their disappeared children, be found.

Ironically, many years earlier the equally beloved and condemned Eva Peron, in a different setting, commented “The country which forgets its children renounces its future”. Evita’s words still ring true today, as America’s paralyzed Congress refuses to pass the Dream Act, an Act designed to legalize innocent victims, those children  brought to the U.S. illegally, sometimes as infants, or children whose legal status in this country has expired, due to no fault of their own.

These students are our athletes, our school and community leaders, and our valedictorians. They have lived in the United States almost their entire lives and have so much to contribute, but without a social security number, without legal immigration status, they cannot. They number in the thousands and like the “desaparecidos” of Argentina, are in their own prisons, our forgotten children. They are not asking for money from the U.S taxpayers or government but simply a chance to become all that they can be, to give back to the country that they always believed was theirs—until the day that they requested their social security card from their parents in order to perhaps sit for their SAT exam, take the driver’s license test or file that first on-line college application. This month, in March, when other high school seniors receive their acceptance letters from colleges and universities, these children—America’s “desaparecidos”, will sit quietly on the side, masking their pain from their American classmates, wondering when our Congress will acknowledge their existence and give them back their lives. Perhaps it’s time for the immigrant community to organize our own Thursday marches for these children, around our “Plaza de Mayo” in each city, each of us wearing white handkerchiefs to remind our legislators that if America continues to forget these children, we renounce a piece of our future.

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