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instantcoffee69 OP t1_jc256w6 wrote

> In the early 2000s, a gang killing of a nephew drove Adolfo Martinez’s mother away from her native Honduras. She fled with Adolfo in her arms, then about a year old, and joined her husband, who was already working in the United States. Here, his parents do not practice what they set out to do as young adults. But coming to the U.S. — even without documentation — meant that their children might have opportunities they did not.
Martinez, by all measures, thrived. Growing up in Owings Mills, he served as a Boy Scout, tutored middle schoolers and volunteered with his church. When it came time to apply for colleges, he was accepted into eight out of 10 schools. The 21-year-old student is currently a junior majoring in forensic studies at Loyola University Maryland and an Ultimate Frisbee competitor.

This man, like many others, has been an outstanding American, doing well for his community. Now he faces deportation to a country he does not know, nor call home.

> When Martinez turned 15, his family looked into obtaining legal status for him through DACA. But Republican Donald Trump had just been elected president after disparaging Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals and vowing to build a wall to keep immigrants from crossing the southern border into the United States.
Advocacy groups like CASA feared the new administration would misuse personal information on file to track down and deport DACA recipients, so an attorney with the community organization advised the family against applying for the program.
Instead, the family applied for asylum for Martinez around his 18th birthday. His mother and her friend filed the paperwork together out of desperation and worry for her son. She did not think to look for an immigration lawyer at the time due to the cost, trusting her well-intentioned friend who had gone through the process before.

The system makes "doing the right way" nearly impossible, and that's the point.

> Caught in the middle are more than a million immigrants like Martinez. In Maryland alone, there are an estimated 13,000 individuals who could qualify for DACA and only 7,200 who are in the program, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. A majority of people in deportation proceedings do not have legal representation, and immigrants with attorneys “fare better at every stage of the court process.”

This struggle did not start with Trump, nor did it end with him. It's a long fight, and it must be continued. Trump's policies stay in place, and Democrats have broken their promise. We need to keep pressure until the job is done, and the job is never done.

Here's how to donate to CASA Baltimore

27

HunnerBiDumb t1_jc39ugx wrote

Neither party wants to fix it. And if you’re being completely honest you’ll acknowledge that Reagan actually granted blanket amnesty in 1986 which covered about 2.7M illegals at the time.He did it because Tip O’Neill promised to pass legislation to secure the border and penalize employers that hired illegal immigrants. Problem was, contrary to your post, O’Neill and the democrats never held up their end of the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. There hasn’t been a credible attempt at fixing it since. Include that in your 50 years.

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ccbmtg t1_jc55sxx wrote

well, that's not at all the point I was making but okay. I was trying to reference the ideology that our nation once represented, as one who grew up being told that America is a melting pot and that's a big part of what makes it beautiful.

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S-Kunst t1_jc62ya9 wrote

Lets be real. Our elected leaders do not face this type of problem, in their personal lives. Hence they are not really interested. Since they are usually well off, and have political connections, if they did have a need to get a foreign relative in the country, they could quietly do so.

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bylosellhi11 t1_jc68r9x wrote

Sounds great and I do not necessartly disagree but we still have laws we need to enforce. Instead we have presidents making their own proclamations every 4-8 years, running through the courts to see whats legal while congress sits on their hands because it is now a voter issue as they try to exploit the extremes of both sides.

We have record numbers of people coming across the border which IMO should be absolutely contained and could be if we really wanted to. We have a border, just like every other country, it should be enforced. in Nov '22 there was 206K encounters with border patrol, of which 145K were single adults, predominately male. this is NOT a bunch of families coming across or seeking asylum. Now most are being released under title 8 and will fall through the cracks until congress does something.

Yes we need migrant workers and yes we need to do something about people already here but the spicket should be turned off otherwise until it is resolved through congress. We should make a skill based system and take in the best, most educated first and work backwards from there.

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