American Forum Op-Ed

GEORGIA FORUM

By Volkan Topalli

At each stage of the criminal justice system, the proposed Arizona-style legislative initiatives in Georgia represent a substantial and potentially devastating cost to its citizens, and significant unintended consequences for public safety. The new law would require peace officers to attempt to verify a suspect's immigration status when the suspect is unable to provide legal identification.

The proposed legislation stipulates that, “A peace officer shall not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this [law].” But research demonstrates that it's nearly impossible for individuals to discount attitudes about race when engaging in such tasks. T
Hence, the legislation likely would lead to racial profiling. It would put police officers in a nearly untenable situation, one where they'd be expected to decide not who “looks like” a foreigner (bad enough), but who “looks illegal,” leading to a spate of unnecessary and costly court proceedings when they get it wrong.

Also, the proposed legislation mandates poor policing. Remember, every time a peace officer pulls over or arrests someone because the officer is mandated to determine whether they're illegal, that's time he could be spending looking for or dealing with more serious criminal activity. Despite scandalous anecdotes pitched on radio and TV, academic research reveals that the foreign-born are far less likely to break the law than are average nativeborn citizens -- After all, they fear being unjustly deported or otherwise caught up in the justice system. Also, having local law-enforcement implement this legislation would undoubtedly impair community policing strategies, which would harm law enforcement’s efforts to ensure public safety for all residents. Many law-enforcement officials around the nation strongly oppose this type of legislation. They and many of the citizens they protect prefer to focus scarce public resources on fighting crime and promoting public safety, not on tackling immigration enforcement.

There's more.

We don't have a court or corrections system capable of handling more prisoners. Given the downturn in the economy, there've been massive cuts to the criminal justice system in our state.

While the underfunded and overworked court system processes its way through new arrestees that law enforcement would bring them under this legislation, many of these individuals could spend significant time in already overcrowded jails until the courts decide whether they'll be incarcerated. Exacerbating the problem, overcrowded detention centers and jails charge the state an added premium of anywhere from $22 to $45 per day per inmate when they hold an inmate because a designated prison is full. It follows that accumulated costs to taxpayers of housing a sudden influx of inmates could be massive.

There's even more.

When jails exceed maximum capacities, safety becomes an issue. The next time you wonder whether corrections officers have a dangerous job, keep in mind that most prisons maintain an average ratio of 35 inmates to one corrections officer (who cannot carry a firearm). Now, increase that ratio to 50 or 60 inmates per officer ? "Hazard pay” takes on new meaning. The number of state-sentenced prisoners being housed in county jails rose 61 percent between 2008 and 2009. How high will that number jump with implementation of this legislation? And how much will it burden an already-strained and costly (at roughly $12,000-$18,000 per inmate) correctional system?

These are but a few of potential costs and pitfalls of voting in such legislation. In the absence of real research on the implications of the proposed legislation, we're rushing headlong into implementing a system that may cost much while not making us safer. Processing and serving people through the criminal justice system is expensive, something Gov. Nathan Deal wisely alluded to when acknowledging that imprisoning nonviolent offenders would place a massive financial burden on state corrections.

How much more a fiscal burden and public safety hazard could this legislation become?


Topalli is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Director at The Crime & Violence Prevention Policy Initiative at Georgia State University.

Copyright (C) 2011 by Georgia Forum. 4/11

AMERICAN FORUM

By Chandelle Summer

The evening of Jan. 18 began ordinarily enough, my husband and I engaging in our usual, bedroom channel-surfing along with the attendant full-scale, courtroom-worthy debate over which program was to be selected. With 1,150 channels, it's a long and arduous process. Then it happened.

"Two-four-six-eight, we don't want to integrate." Grainy, black-and-white images of throngs of fresh-faced angry teen-agers dressed in crisp white shirts standing at the Arch of the University of Georgia repeatedly screaming in unison, "Two-four-six-eight, we don't want to integrate." We were watching "Eyes on the Prize," a PBS series about 1960s civil-rights struggles.

Five decades ago, young African Americans endured the wrath of the white establishment and subjected themselves to close-range, fire-hosing at water pressures so strong they could rip the bark right off a tree. They endured rock-throwing, face-smashing and arm-twisting arrests. A young woman walked proudly onto the campus of the University of Georgia to the jeers and taunts of an angry mob. Fifty years later, here we go again.

Bills pending in this session of the Georgia General Assembly propose that all institutions of higher education and technical schools in Georgia deny entrance to children of undocumented immigrants. Presently, those without documentation who graduated from a Georgia high school can attend college in Georgia provided they pay out-of-state tuition. But the Georgia Legislature now is considering barring these students altogether. Mind you, these are the same children who have been educated by the state and who have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance since they were toddlers.

American students are taught the evils of "caste systems" in other countries that allow only a small pool of candidates to receive higher education. Ostensibly, in America the best and the brightest are selected from a well-honed system of competition and opportunity. Merit-based achievement is encouraged, character education is mandated, and students in Georgia are taught that if they study hard, participate and achieve, a bright future is all but guaranteed. Of course, if you are an honor student who happened to have been cradled in your mother's arms when you crossed the southern border, even if you haven't laid eyes on the motherland since, forget it. Your land of opportunity may extend only to the tomato patch in South Georgia, where you will be welcomed with open arms because our agricultural industry depends upon you.

The most common refrain for those who would deny admittance to qualified students regardless of heritage is that those who pay no taxes don't support our institutions of higher learning. That argument must fail since undocumented workers pay sales taxes, property taxes and often pay payroll taxes. And no one is suggesting barring children whose parents don't or can't pay their taxes. If contribution is the standard by which we judge qualification, then clearly all those who fail to buy lottery tickets should be stopped from sending their children to school on the Hope scholarship.

Only a small percentage of undocumented students now attend college in Georgia. Chancellor Erroll Davis said, "Our capacity is not being stressed by thousands of illegal students. Out of 311,000 students in our 35 colleges and universities last fall semester, we found 501 undocumented students, or less than two-tenths of 1 percent. These 501 students all pay out-of-state tuition, which more than fully covers the cost of their education." The students Davis is referring to live in fear. They were powerless over the choices that brought them here and they are powerless over their destiny. Those of us blessed with reason, conscience and heart cannot sit back and watch another generation of children disenfranchised by laws born of prejudice and hate. The wide-eyed stares of those children who have been devalued and dehumanized as though they are somehow responsible for their own predicament will haunt our collective consciousness. We must not repeat the same social injustice that tarnished Georgia two score and 10 years ago.

Summer is an attorney and mother of five. She appears as "loyal opposition" on talk-radio simulcast on WDUN-550 AM and 102.9 FM, live stream on AccessNorthGa.com, and founder of Dream On (www.supportdreamon.com).

Copyright (C) 2011 by Georgia Forum. 3/11

NORTH CAROLINA EDITORIAL FORUM

By Chris Liu-Beers

As the legislature returns to Raleigh, all eyes will be on the budget with its projected shortfall of over $3 billion. But observers expect a slew of bills on other issues as well, including one that always attracts controversy: immigration.

No doubt it will be tempting for some lawmakers to try to implement Arizona’s “papers, please” immigration law here in North Carolina. But as we have already learned from Arizona, this approach is shortsighted and misguided.

Anti-immigrant forces want to ban undocumented immigrant families from renting apartments or sending their kids to school. These kinds of policies are unworkable and inconsistent with our values.

What does it mean for our communities when our neighbors are afraid to take their children to school or go to work? What would it mean for our schools to have families ripped apart on a daily basis and kids left behind when their parents are deported? What does it mean for our system of justice when people are serving jail time and prison sentences because they seek a better life and are willing to work hard in the sun to achieve it?

While people are understandably frustrated over the failure of the federal government to fix our broken immigration system, creating a patchwork of potentially unconstitutional, costly and confusing laws is not an answer. If we follow Arizona on immigration, we’re facing log jams in the court systems, overworked prosecutors and public defenders wasting their time, and police distracted from pursuing true criminals.

Instead of pouring billions of dollars into rounding up hardworking immigrant families, we need to fix our system so that immigrants who came here to work, pay taxes and learn English can become legal and contribute fully.

Some places, unlike Arizona, have quietly been moving forward with positive, integrative approaches to new immigrants in their communities. They recognize the long-term benefits gained from having thriving immigrant communities that aren’t forced into the shadows of society.

I’m proud that the city of Durham has been a leader in some of these positive efforts. For example, while the city has implemented the controversial 287(g) program (which essentially deputizes local police to enforce federal immigration law), it has been careful to target primarily serious criminal offenders.

Chief Lopez and other city leaders have consistently communicated with Latino constituents and built trusting relationships among Durham’s immigrant communities.

Durham has not only rejected an Arizona-style crackdown on immigrants -- the City Council called for a boycott of Arizona -- it has also worked to improve civic participation and immigrant integration into mainstream society. This approach improves public safety, creates jobs and helps local economies.

For example, the Durham City Council recently voted to recognize the Mexican government’s matricula consular as a valid form of identification. At that meeting, Chief Lopez stated that “The significance is to garner trust from the [Latino] community.” Elsewhere in Durham, the Latino Community Credit Union has become nationally recognized for its work in realizing the business potential of local Hispanic entrepreneurs.

Humane immigration politics are smart politics in the long-term. Political strategists from David Axelrod to Karl Rove agree that Arizona’s approach on immigration is misguided. n an increasingly diverse nation, there is no long-term political future for politicians pushing Arizona copycat laws. Elected officials who lead with intelligent, humane policies on immigration will both build a stronger economy in North Carolina and win politically over the long haul.

Immigrants -- both documented and those without status -- are already a vital part of the fabric of our society. They are contributing members of our communities; they are our neighbors, classmates, coworkers and friends. We need to make sure they can participate fully in our society and contribute fully to our economy -- through work, in school, for public safety.

Ultimately, we need national comprehensive immigration reform to ensure fairness and accountability in the labor market. Only comprehensive reform will create a level playing field for workers and employers, increase pay for low-wage workers, punish unscrupulous employers who undercut their honest competitors, and increase tax compliance and revenues.

Until Congress enacts such reforms, there are a range of positive state and local policies that can improve the lives of immigrants and raise living standards and public safety for everyone, native and immigrant alike. It’s time for North Carolina to step in the right direction.
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Liu-Beers is program associate for the North Carolina Council of Churches.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 2/11

NORTH CAROLINA EDITORIAL FORUM

By James Moeser and Andrea Bazán

In a program known as the UNC Scholars Latino Initiative (SLI), students at UNC-Chapel Hill make a three-year commitment to mentor Hispanic students at Jordan Matthews High School in Siler City. Students sign on as sophomores and work one-on-one with the high school sophomores through their graduation, preparing them to apply successfully for college.

We have seen first-hand the positive effects of this mentoring program on both the high school students as well as our own at UNC. Many of these young people have gone on to enroll in college, including some at Chapel Hill. Most, but not all of these students, are American citizens, but their legal status has not been an issue for the university. UNC’s concern has been its responsibility for the education of all North Carolinians, including the development of their full potential as human beings.

However, when students apply to the university, their legal status becomes a matter of grave concern. As non-residents, they are required to pay out-of-state tuition, and are not eligible for either federal or state need-based aid. The Office of Student Financial Aid has had to cobble together aid packages made up entirely of private funds. As a result, UNC has been able to admit only a handful of these promising students. Most of them are being left behind.

But now, it appears that the U.S. Senate is once again considering the passage of the DREAM Act. This bipartisan legislation has the ability to open the doors for our high-achieving Hispanic students, such as the ones in the SLI.

The version of the proposal under consideration by the Senate has been scaled back drastically to increase the chance of passage. Unfortunately, gone are the original provisions that would allow these students to pay in-state tuition. Also removed is any eligibility for federal student aid. Still, this proposal represents a small step forward.

The DREAM Act creates a path toward the ability to earn legal status for undocumented students who came to this country before the age of 16. The proposal has many pieces. Students must have lived here for at least five consecutive years, have graduated from high school or obtained a GED, and have been admitted to an institution of higher education.

We want to stress that this is not an easy path. After the required completion of two years of college or military service, the students will be eligible only for provisional legal status. They would not be eligible for permanent legal status for 10 years.

Some will argue that this proposal encourages more illegal immigration, but that objection has been met by the provisions which apply only to students currently in the U.S. Others will argue that Congress should wait until it can pass comprehensive immigration reform. Still others will argue that the proposal has been so watered down in attempts to win full bipartisan support that it does not go far enough. While we share many of those concerns, this is a case where we cannot let “the perfect” be the enemy of “the good.” In the absence of truly addressing our immigration challenges, passing the DREAM Act is the right thing to do.

Good people can disagree about the ethics and morality of the underlying issues involving immigration and legal status. Ultimately, for us, the best argument for the DREAM ACT is simply this: What best serves the needs of the State of North Carolina and the United States? In the competitive environment of this global economy, is it in our own interests to hold back a whole generation of one sector of our communities from reaching their full potential as job creators and tax payers? The DREAM Act provides an answer to this question. We hope the Senate will have the wisdom to do the right thing.
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Moeser is Chancellor Emeritus of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bazán is President of Triangle Community Foundation.
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AMERICAN FORUM
 
By Erik Camayd-Freixas

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Camayd-Freixas is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at Florida International University.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by American Forum 12/10

ARIZONA EDITORIAL FORUM

By Carmen Cornejo

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Cornejo is executive director of CADENA, a DREAM Act advocacy group in Arizona comprised of educators and professionals that have been working for the passage of the DREAM Act since 2002.
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Copyright © 2010 by Arizona Editorial Forum. 12/10

GEORGIA FORUM

By Jerry Gonzalez

Seventy-four thousand. According to a recent report issued by the Migration Policy Institute, that's the number of undocumented youth in Georgia that could potentially benefit from the passage of the DREAM Act. These children were brought to this country by their parents at very young ages, and through no fault of their own are undocumented.

We as taxpayers have invested in their K-12 education, and they deserve a chance to go to college or serve in our military. These 74,000 kids are 3 percent of the 2.1 million nationally who could potentially be impacted by the DREAM Act. They deserve an opportunity to contribute to the country they have known as their home for most of their lives. The bipartisan DREAM Act would provide undocumented students the opportunity to become legal residents if they graduate from high school and complete two years of college or military service.

It's a no brainer. The DREAM Act is a tremendous investment, a great way to further integrate students who are already an integral part of our society and economy, and a great incentive for these young people to pursue higher education or military service. The viability of the DREAM Act is even included in the U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Plan for 2010-2012 as a way to increase potential military recruits. Despite the fact that comprehensive immigration reform is truly the answer to our broken immigration system, the DREAM Act would be a good start.

Unfortunately, during the most recent Joint Legislative Committee on Immigration Reform public hearing, our state legislators who have the power to influence the passage of this critical legislation continue to deliberately overlook the facts and entertain the reckless rhetoric at the expense of innocent students. In fact, Rep. Tom Rice (R-Norcross) has pre-filed a proposal that would ban access to higher education to all undocumented students in our state, making Georgia only the second state with such a restrictive policy for access to higher education. In fact, most states have passed legislation that encourages youth in these situations to attend higher education by allowing in-state tuition. These states are in full compliance with federal laws.

In Georgia, the Board of Regents has reserved a ban of access to the top five universities and colleges due to space limitations, but allows access to all other institutions for higher education. These students when enrolled in Georgia, under current state law, would be required to pay out-of-state tuition, which creates a profit for the colleges they attend. Their enrollment is not subsidized at all by taxpayers, according to the analysis done by the Board of Regents.

Education is a great equalizer. Despite the belief of Georgia Senator Bill Heath (R-Bremen), these young people are not "wasted space" at our institutions of higher learning. They are truly an asset for our state. Denying access to education to anyone who is qualified and willing to be educated is morally reprehensible. These youth are the promise and the future of our great state and nation, and they should be afforded every opportunity to fulfill their human potential to contribute to society.

The time for political posturing has passed. It’s time to lead and time to stand up for our shared values of an education and rewarding hard work. We would hope that our Congressional delegation would move quickly and support the DREAM Act with great urgency during this lame duck session. No one should dash the dreams of so many young people.
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Gonzalez is executive director, Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO).
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Copyright (C) 2010 by Georgia Forum. 11/10

FORUM

By Elias Feghali

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Feghali is communications director for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the Tennessee Editorial Forum. 5/10

AMERICAN FORUM

By David Bacon

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David Bacon is a writer and photographer, and author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008). He lives in Berkeley, CA.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 3/10

AMERICAN FORUM

By Erik Camayd-Freixas

On April 23, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a draconian bill that flies in the face of the United States Constitution and undermines the core values upon which this nation is founded.

When this law goes into effect in August, it purportedly will be legal in Arizona to dispense with the Fourth Amendment right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. As in totalitarian regimes, local police will be authorized to detain anyone they “reasonably suspect” is in the country illegally. It will be a crime to be present in Arizona without carrying proper documentation. And who might the police reasonably suspect of this new crime? Well, certainly not the white majority.

Gov. Brewer justified the racist law with empty rhetoric: “Racial profiling will not be tolerated," and, "we have to trust our law enforcement.” Meanwhile, Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio already is under federal investigation following allegations of abuse of power and racial profiling.

Trust must be earned -- by police through their actions and by lawmakers through their judgment. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposed the bill because they realize it erodes community trust and causes real crimes to go unreported. Former state attorney general Grant Woods, a fellow Republican, also opposed it on constitutional grounds. In Gov. Brewer's judgment, the law is “another tool” for the state to solve a “crisis” that “the federal government has refused to fix." But police chiefs don’t need or want this "tool."

What “crisis” and what “federal inaction”? The U.S. built hundreds of miles of new fence and militarized the border. Also, illegal entries have dramatically decreased since the recession. Our undocumented population grew by only 3 percent a year during the last decade, and is now on the decline, in tandem with U.S. labor demands. Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials imprisoned and deported a record 380,000 immigrants, 80 percent of whom, by government accounts, were non-criminals -- common workers, including thousands of parents, spouses and siblings of American citizens and veterans. Hundreds of legal residents are deported in error each year, too. But nothing quenches radical lawmakers’ thirst for systematic persecution and repression.

This Arizona law is meant to feed migrant mothers and fathers into a brutal immigration system and its engorged network of privatized prisons. Local police will be pressed to meet arrest quotas.

While Congress defines illegal entry as a civil infraction, Arizona will arrest migrants on criminal complaints -- no trial. They simply get checked against a database and turned over to ICE for indefinite, mandatory immigration detention -- without charges, lawyers, bail or rights. They are then shipped cross-country to one of 300 profit-hungry contract prisons -- far from family, community and legal support, thrown in with common criminals, under abject conditions, until the day they're deported as “criminal aliens."

The harshness of federal enforcement prefigures the newly authorized Arizona police state. Noncriminal arrests will top 2007 levels, when 91 percent of deportees had no criminal record. The law hides this utter failure by declaring all undocumented migrants “criminals.”

The record shows that immigration crackdowns neither make us safer nor combat true criminality. The recent surge in drug violence near the border has nothing to do with centuries-old labor migration patterns, and everything to do with the U.S. demand for drugs and its lack of gun control, Arizona being a source of weapons for Mexican cartels. To blame all migrants for crimes of others is more than unjust; it is the essence of prejudice.

Our country’s true crisis is one of human rights and constitutionality. Elitist politicians, out of touch with the people, are callous to the hundreds of thousands of lives and families arbitrarily shattered each year, and unbothered by the erosion of American justice and democracy. Their “crisis”? People of color turning up at the country club.

Defenders of the Constitution are preparing to sue for a federal injunction. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., called for a boycott of his state, which would lead to billion-dollar losses in conventions, tourism and trade. State violation of the Civil Rights Act jeopardizes millions in Title VI funding.

This law will be swiftly stricken down. Perhaps then, zealots and radical politicians will get the message: that Arizona is not their private ranch, but an inalienable member of our Union; and that Americans of every color, creed and conviction regard such affronts to our Constitution as manifest acts of tyranny.
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Camayd-Freixas, who has a doctorate in Spanish from Harvard, is professor of Hispanic studies at Florida International University.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 4/10

WASHINGTON FORUM

By Pramila Jayapal

As the debate around the recently passed Arizona immigration law clearly demonstrates, racial and religious profiling remains a real and urgent problem in the United States.

Washington state isn't immune to the scourge of this discriminatory behavior by law-enforcement officials. This past October, we discovered that FBI agents, instead of collecting information only about people with direct links to national security threats, scrutinized Somali communities across the nation, including those in Seattle. Within 150 miles of our northern border, in counties such as Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom, Latino, Arab and Muslim communities face an everyday threat of profiling from both border patrol agents and Immigration Control Enforcement officials. And right here in Seattle, we continue to see the racial disparities that disproportionately affect African-Americans, Asians and other people of color.

Although racial profiling has been unfairly familiar to African-Americans and others for decades, mainstream America has only in the recent decades started to acknowledge the issue. Referred to as "driving while black or brown," racial profiling surfaced in popular culture long before law enforcement conceded the practice.

After 9/11, the U.S. government began an era of blatant profiling, rounding up more than 1,200 Arab, South Asian and Muslim men and holding them without charges.

This didn’t make us safer. In fact, the mass roundup never apprehended anyone linked to the 9/11 attacks. An inspector general's report later revealed that many detainees had been blocked from contacting attorneys and some had been beaten or otherwise physically abused by guards in federal prisons.

Unfortunately, the scope of racial profiling is expanding. As responsibility for enforcing immigration laws and finding undocumented immigrants has been increasingly delegated to state and local police, evidence of increased racial profiling is emerging. Bad immigration laws like the one in Arizona threaten to sanction racial and religious profiling by local police.

History has shown that using race as a substitute for criminal behavior is bad policy. Research has shown that focusing on behavior rather than race is smart law enforcement.

When law-enforcement officers abolish race as a factor and instead rely on behavior, they catch more criminals. In the late 1990s, U.S. Customs Service eliminated use of race in deciding which individuals to stop and search for illegal contraband and instead began focusing on suspects' behavior. Studies showed that this shift to "color-blind profiling techniques" increased the rate at which searches led to discovery of illegal contraband or activity by more than 300 percent.

In response to the revelation about FBI profiling of Somalis, Farhana Khera, president of Muslim Advocates and a commissioner in the upcoming hearing on May 8th, Racial Profiling: Face the Truth Hearing, noted that the FBI is harassing Muslim-Americans by singling them out for scrutiny. “We think the FBI should be focused on following actual leads rather than putting entire communities under the microscope,” Khera said to the New York Times.

On May 8th, OneAmerica, in conjunction with The Rights Working Group, will hold the first of six hearings on racial profiling from noon to 4 p.m. at the Burlington Public Library in Burlington, Wash., on profiling in diverse immigrant communities. We expect Arabs, Muslims, South Asians, Latinos, African-Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans will all come forward to share the shared but unjust experience of being targeted because of racial, religious or ethnic backgrounds.
I will be joining a distinguished panel of national and local commissioners who will listen to testimony, including Monica Ramirez, Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at DOJ; Karen Narasaki, Executive Director of Asian American Justice Center; Farhana Khera, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates and National Association of Muslim Lawyers; and Judge Steven Gonzalez, King County Superior Court.
We hope community members from across the state will join us. It is time to tell our story and make our voices heard so we can put an end to racial profiling.
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Jayapal is The author is Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by Washington Forum. 5/10

AMERICAN FORUM

By Simon Cho

Five years after leaving my hometown of Upper Marlboro, Md., I returned to my elementary school to speak about being an Olympian.

Everyone knew I’d helped the United States speed skating team win a bronze medal in the 5000-meter relay. But there’s another important part of my story I don’t always talk about: I’m a Korean immigrant who grew up in the U.S. without immigration documents.

I was 4 when, clutching my mother’s hand, we crossed into the U.S. from Canada. My father secured my U.S. citizenship and passport when I was 11, but I remember little of the process.

When I was a child, my parents ran a small seafood take-out shop, worked 365 days a year, and came home late each night. Even with all their hard work, we barely scraped by. Growing up, I was the only child I knew who never had a family vacation, even on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Labor Day or New Year’s. On days I helped my parents at the shop I came home exhausted, and I couldn’t believe they worked this hard every day.

Then my parents made an even bigger sacrifice for me.

I’d started speed skating as a child and showed a particular aptitude for it. Later, to support my skating, my parents depleted the family resources and we moved to Salt Lake City for my training. Without any job waiting for them, they risked everything so I could skate and dream big.

There aren’t a lot of people of color in speed skating, which in the U.S. tends to be a white sport. When I came to skating, I came not just as a kid who wanted to compete, but also as a Korean American who knew how challenging it could be to live as an immigrant, with all the hard work and insecurity, especially given that we still weren’t citizens.

At times, seeing all the sacrifices and risks, I wanted to give up. I even took a break from skating. But my friends and schoolmates encouraged me to return, and I also got lots of support from older skaters of color, people like Apolo Ohno and Shani Davis, who told me I should cherish the journey.

This winter, I was a member of the U.S. Olympic short track speed skating team, and I brought home a medal. I reached my dreams. And driving me on was the sacrifice my parents had made.

America’s always been my home. Yet returning from the Olympics I knew I was truly an American and felt accepted. We flew from Vancouver to San Francisco, where we had a layover, and when our team got off the plane a bunch of passengers gave us an ovation.

It’s been an amazing journey. I was thrilled to be able to return as an Olympian to Stone Mill Elementary School. I spoke with all the children at the school, from kindergarteners to fifth graders, and saw the teachers who had helped build my character. It was great to share my story, which is unique but also typical. We all have dreams and hopes.

As important as skating continues to be for me, it’s not the only area in which I want to succeed and make a difference. I want to help remove some of the challenges immigrant families face, because I know that our immigration system doesn’t reflect the best that we can be.

This year, President Obama has an opportunity to reform our immigration laws. I hope my story will inspire him and countless others to go full force and have no regrets. It’s time to bring that medal home.
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Simon Cho is an Olympic short track speed skater.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 5/10

IOWA FORUM
By Erik Camayd-Freixas