Illegal aliens are coming in to steal our healthcare and our jobs! At least, that’s what I hear. Nobody’s talking about the kids caught in the crossfire. In “Immigrants’ children might get help from DREAM Act”, Victor Manuel Ramos profiles one of those kids.

“Walter Lara grew up in Florida. An honor student in high school, he prefers to speak English and is a computer whiz who dreamed of becoming a graphic artist. But Lara, a Sorrento resident, is an illegal immigrant with a final deportation order. He has several weeks left before he has to return to an Argentina he no longer remembers.”

His story is similar to those of many hopeless students I taught as a NYC public high school teacher. Without hope of any hope of furthering their educational careers in college, many of these students became increasingly depressed as graduation approached.

One of my juniors, a very intelligent, bright well-read 16-year-old Dominican illegal immigrant considered keeping her boyfriend’s baby because the baby would have been a U.S. citizen. In the end, she decided to have an abortion. She simply couldn’t bring a baby into the world without knowing what her own future would bring.