Reply to Why do people defend illegal immigration? (Serious question)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What angers me the most about illegal immigrants isn't them "taking our jobs" as so many fly-over whites claim, but their lack of respect for our educational system.

I'm a HS teacher.  More than half of my students are still classified as ESL students.  I'm fluent in Spanish and part of the team that works after school to assist the ESL students with tutoring.  Many of the students who do seek help and want to learn/excel, are hindered by their parents.  Their parents insist on them getting a job to help support the family.  So instead of being able to stay after school for help, they immediately rush out to work (some even two jobs after school) and then come to class the next day without their work done because they didn't have time.  The parents don't care.  Money is needed to survive here and once you reach working age, THAT should be your goal, not school.

And since their parents speak little to no English, they are unable to assist with homework.  Or are unwilling, as one father told me this year.  I have another student who is very bright in all of her math courses, but struggles in her basic 9th grade English course.  I offered to work one-on-one with her but she said she couldn't because she was responsible for picking up her younger siblings from their after school care before 4 or else her mom got charged a higher fee.

How can you tell me you came here to give your child a better life when you're doing as many things as possible to hinder that child from having a better life?!  Sure, teens should have jobs after school, but not multiple jobs so that they get home from work at midnight too exhausted to do homework.  And it's fine to help take care of younger siblings, but when it prevents them from attending free tutoring that is needed to pass a class?  [/quote]

I'm a teacher too, and I totally get where you are coming from. The problem is that you don't completely understand where THEY are coming from.  To you, the goal is to do well in school, go to a good college, and get a good white collar job someday and live a middle class lifestyle.  To them, the goal is to survive another day so they don't have to go back to where they came from.  They'd love to do all the things you want them to do, but all that is a luxury they can't afford, and so unimportant in the face of what awaits them back home.  Consider for example, how homework compares to having thugs come to your door and threaten your family if you don't pay them, or try to kidnap your child for military service to a warlord, or to work for a drug cartel, or some other kind of gang, or even just to live in a place with no running water, no electricity, and no future hope for even the most modest job no matter how hard you are willing to work.  I defend them because I don't see what right any of us have to keep them out.  Most of us didn't legally immigrate here - we're just the lucky descendants of other people who managed to come, and I'm sure a lot of us have "illegal" immigrants in our past and don't even know it.  [/quote]

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