Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 4:30:56 PM
One group left out of most discussions about immigration is the group that came here as infants and have lived their entire life in the U.S. My wife and I know a family that have a member that came here when she was 4 months old. She grew up in Arizona and has lived her entire life here. She went to public school and speaks excellent English.
She is technically an illegal alien. She doesn't think of herself as an illegal alien. She thinks of herself as an American. She knows she is not a legal citizen, but considers herself one in everything except for the paperwork.
There was a news story about a group of students that won some award and had trouble because part of all of the group were technically illegal aliens. The problem they had was that they had never lived anywhere except for Phoenix, AZ. The government wanted them to go back "home" and come here legally. To them, Phoenix, AZ was home. The federal government did not consider Phoenix their home. I do not remember how the situation turned out, but it had to be traumatic for those kids.
In all of the discussions I have heard about immigration, these people are left out. When I wrote Senator Kyl about this, he just wrote back about illegal immigration. He did not address this special group of illegal immigrants.