Go Lou!

I'm sitting in my classroom watching Lou Dobbs and the update on the Minuteman Project. Are the people who volunteered to guard our borders from illegal activity vigilante?

According to GW (my hero!) they are vigilante. Perhaps, however, they are only viewed that way because they are trying to solve a problem that our government is ignoring. Let me tell you, Bush, in the absence of true leadership, chaos ensues and new "leadership" emerges. Don't you preach that same message with regard to Iraq?

True leaders actually lead. They provide the vision and then put the right people in place to implement strategies. They communicate clearly - they don't throw around carefully crafted words to terrorize and invoke fear. Leaders solve problems, they don't ignore them. Unfortunately, our political system is surprisingly void of true leaders. And because no one has come up with a successful strategy to deal with the problem of illegal immigration, the Minutemen were born. I don't think that their strategy is the best, but they are at least addressing and attempting to deal with this toxic social issue.

Perhaps because I said this I will be labeled racist. I'm not anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic, anti-Canadian, anti-French or anti-Martian for that matter. I don't care what skin color sits next to me on a subway or moves in next door to my suburban stucco homestead. And yet, I wish that something would be done about illegal immigration. It is a problem for every party involved.

Many of my undocumented seniors (who are amazing, wonderful, driven students) are finding out that they can't go to college in the United States. I have one girl who has been here since she was 2 months old. She is perfectly capable of handling a college career but will have a hard time pursuing one because her parents came here illegally, looking for a better life. I have another undocumented student who openly says that he hates the US and the only reason he stays here is to make money. He doesn't want to go through the immigration process, but wants US citizens to pay for his schooling, medical bills and career training.

The point is that it doesn't matter that both of these students are technically from Mexico. It doesn't matter that their skin color is darker than mine. It really doesn't even matter that they are here because their parents came here illegally. What does matter is that this problem won't go away by ignoring it (like our government does) or turning it into an agenda of hatred. We consistently let down American and Mexican citizens by choosing one of these two options.

In actuality, we need to deal with our issues instead of glossing over them and letting them morph into new situations for chaos. But that would mean everyone would have to take responsibility for the problem and work for a solution. How many times in politics (or in real life) does that really happen? It infuriates me that our government can't weigh in on any domestic issue (except for private, family issues) and then criticizes the masses when they attempt to address the problem that the government ignored.