Hate is Not Supposed to be an American Value

photo by Carlos Lorenzo / flickr

My eye caught the headline on yesterday's Greenville News. Migrant Children Kept from Enrolling in School. I wondered what this meant. Here's the way the article began:

"Candelario Jimon Alonzo came to the U.S. dreaming of becoming something more than what seemed possible along the rutted roads of his hometown in Guatemala's highlands. This was his chance: He could earn a U.S. high school education and eventually become a teacher.

Instead, the 16- year-old spends most days alone in the tumbledown Memphis house where he lives with his uncle, leaving only occasionally to play soccer and pick up what English he can from his friends.

Local school officials have kept Jimon out of the classroom since he tried to enroll in January
...officials contend the teens lacked transcripts or were too old to graduate on time..."

Before we jump on Memphis particularly the article went on to say: "The Associated Press has found that in at least 35 districts in 14 states, hundreds of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been discouraged from enrolling in schools or pressured into what advocates and attorneys argue are separate but unequal alternative programs..."

Read the whole article for yourself. There is something terribly wrong with this country when we block yearning young people--and their parents--from trying to fulfill their God-given dreams. We have always had a spotty record with immigrants. Talk to the ancestors of Irish, Poles, Italians, Jews and others--and you will see that Miss Liberty came with serious restrictions.

This is 2016. It is high time we grew up and owned up to those words that we still find on the base of the Stature of Liberty.

art work by Jimmie / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com