Letter To Ms. Roberts at the AZ Republic

Ms. Roberts:

Your column in today's Republic is based on the notion that because 7 of 10 Arizonans voted to deny in-state-tuition to undocumented students no one else should help them. You decry what private financial aide sources do with their grants as snubbing the intent of Proposition 300. But Proposition 300 had to do with state money. You must consider it your business that private entitites want to help undocumented students.

Under values you hold dear young people, who have no other country and are Americans-in-fact if not in hyper-technical law, are to be denied educational opportunities. Lets have these young folks on the streets, uneducated, adding to the public welfare rolls, contributing less than more, sliding into crime, never reaching their potential, staying in poverty. This is visionary. These terrible youths, brought here as innocent infants or little children by their parents, ought not dare obtain an education. Instead, we should build every obtacle to keep them as part of the nation's economic underbelly. This is public policy to be envied the world over.

The self-righteous attitude that the kids in question so egregiously rip-off the tax payer is dishonest in the extreme. More nauseating is the anti-immigrant crowd's entrenched state of denial over the fact that the parents of undocumented youths were lured here from their countries by the U.S. industry accomplice to toil at paltry wages, contribute immeasurably to the nation's economy and make better the lives of all Americans. In the process, undocumented immigrants have never been accorded the human dignity, the basic human right, of a work visa. They have given of their blood and sweat, constantly looking over their shoulder, kept in an illegal status. This all makes it easier to pay miserable wages, depress the costs of labor and keep consumer prices down.

Where is your bull horn expression of indignation at these injustices? When will you write a column condemning these outrages? At what point does your integrity dictate that you dig deep for a small measure of humility to utter a word of thanks for the fact that you, myself and the rest of society live off of the backs of the undocumented? That you bemoan in-state tuition speaks volumes about your own sense of entitlement, your own failure to acknowledge that a whole lot more is owed to the undocumented, who have added mightily to building the state's economy, than in-state tuition for their beautiful, aspiring child scholars.

It is small-minded that because 70% of the people who voted made a callous decision, or worse, acted out of good-old racism, you throw in with them under a warped exaltation of democracy. The vast majority of electors in the segregated South voted for their own brand of injustices, then hid behind the same shallow excuse, i.e, the will of the majority, as if this made sacred the unholy. You should ponder that seeking refuge in this debate behind the will of an unjust majority is a glaringly lame attempt to cleanse injustice. Falling back on the fact that prevailing numbers have imposed their will does not enlighten dark hearts any more than it justifies the mean-spirited prejudices of the many. To rely on this is primitive. It also strays far from what the Founders had in mind.

Accordingly, in the matter of Prop. 300, the will of an ignorant or racist majority, like that of 1960's Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery, etc., be damned. Your grandstanding defense of a democratically achieved immorality, at the expense of the minority, be damned as well.

Antonio D. Bustamante

Attorney at Law

Category: Immigration