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A Second-grader and The First Lady: An Immigration Story

MÁS EN ESTA SECCIÓN

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COMPARTA ESTE CONTENIDO:

“How she leans her cheek upon her hand!”

 

No, this is not a mere quote from Romeo and Juliet; we actually wonder what was that second-grader thinking after telling the First Lady: “Barack Obama is taking everybody away that doesn’t have papers,” followed by a faint “…but my mom doesn’t have papers.”

The First Lady’s reply “we have to work on that, we have to fix that,” was no comfort, not reassured the girl literally leaned her cheek upon her hand…

A second-grader and the First Lady is indeed a classic immigration story.  A tale in which adults struggle to do justice to immigrants of good moral character and children see clearly the unfairness of it all.

The tale is solidly grounded in fact, demographic fact.  For the U.S. under-18 population, whites will become the minority in the year 2023 according to the Census Bureau.

For baby boomers it is a challenge to understand since in their early youth -1970-  “less than 5 percent (of the national population) was foreign born” found the Brookings Institution in its “State of Metropolitan America” immigration study.

What is so hard to assimilate for baby boomers?  Well, the case is the U.S. has not seen such a high percentage of foreign-born since the early 20th century when it peaked at 14.7 percent in 1910 with 60% of immigrants coming from Europe.

Yet the tide is changing again. Today with 12.5 percent of the U.S. population foreign-born 53% coming from Latin America, a similar phenomenon would curb the immigration tide: the 1920’s Great Depression and today’s economic depression.

A typical baby boomer (1946-1964) –First lady Obama was born in 1964- grew up in different times with a negligible percentage of immigrants and typically falls within a “cultural generation gap” per Brookings.

The perils of this gap “between a largely minority multiethnic child and young adult population, and a primarily white elderly and older baby boomer population,” according to the Brookings Institution, is that it will take a while before it disappears. 

Until the gap disappears it will be too late for many immigrants who today face deportation and even death while under detention.

 Too late for children like the second-grader who is well aware that her mom “doesn’t have any papers” and whom “Barak Obama will take away”.

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