English, 18.10.2020 04:01 tricklts15
My parents came here from Colombia during a time of great instability there. Escaping a dire economic situation at home, they moved to New Jersey, where they had friends and family, seeking a better life, and then moved to Boston after I was born.
Throughout my childhood I watched my parents try to become legal but to no avail. They lost their money to people they believed to be attorneys, but who ultimately never helped. That meant my childhood was haunted by the fear that they would be deported. If I didnât see anyone when I walked in the door after school, I panicked.
And then one day, my fears were realized. I came home from school to an empty house. Lights were on and dinner had been started, but my family wasnât there. Neighbors broke the news that my parents had been taken away by immigration officers, and just like that, my stable family life was over.
Not a single person at any level of government took any note of me. No one checked to see if I had a place to live or food to eat, and at 14, I found myself basically on my own.
While awaiting deportation proceedings, my parents remained in detention near Boston, so I could visit them. They would have liked to fight deportation, but without a lawyer, and with an immigration system that rarely gives judges the discretion to allow families to stay together, they never had a chance. Finally, they agreed for me to continue my education at Boston Arts Academy, a performing arts high school, and the parents of friends graciously took me in.
I was lucky to have good friends, but I had a rocky existence. I was always insecure about being a nuisance and losing my invitation to stay. I worked a variety of jobs in retail and at coffee shops all through high school. And, though I was surrounded by people who cared about me, part of me ached with every accomplishment, because my parents werenât there to share my joy.
My family and I worked hard to keep our relationships strong, but too-short phone calls and the annual summer visits I made to Colombia didnât suffice. They missed many important events in my life, including my singing recitalsâthey watched my senior recital on a tape I sent them instead of from the audience. And they missed my prom, my college application process and my graduations from high school and college.
My story is all too common. Every day, children who are U. S. citizens are separated from their families as a result of immigration policies that need fixing.
I consider myself lucky because things turned out better for me than for most, including some of my own family members. When my brother was deported, his daughter was just a toddler. She still had her mother, but in a single-parent household, she faced a lot of challenges. My niece made the wrong friends and bad choices. Today, she is serving time in jail, living the reality that I act out on screen.* I donât believe her life would have turned out this way if her father and my parents had been here to guide and support her.
I realize the issues are complicated. But itâs not just in the interest of immigrants to fix the system: Itâs in the interest of all Americans. Children who grow up separated from their families often end up in foster care, or worse, in the juvenile justice system despite having parents who love them and would like to be able to care for them.
I donât believe it reflects our values as a country to separate children and parents in this way. Nor does it reflect our values to hold people in detention without access to good legal representation or a fair shot in a court of law.
President Obama has promised to act on providing deportation relief for families across the country, and I would urge him to do so quickly. Keeping families together is a core American value.
Congress needs to provide a permanent, fair legislative solution, but in the meantime families are being destroyed every day, and the president should do everything in his power to provide the broadest relief possible now. Not one more family should be separated by deportation.
From "My Parents Were Deported" by Diane Guerrero (Copyright © Diane Guerrero, 2014). Reprinted by kind permission of the author.
In the tenth paragraph, the author appeals twice to âour valuesâ in order to
A claim that her familyâs experiences run counter to shared national ideals
B dispel doubts surrounding her own status as an American citizen
C suggest that her audienceâs values might differ from those of her parents
D distinguish between groups who have adopted similar values for different reasons
E show that two sets of values are more similar than they might appear to be
Answers: 1
English, 21.06.2019 20:50
Select the correct answer. lyric poems often deal with intense emotions. which statement best describes the shift in emotion in "lift every voice and sing" as it moves from the first into the second stanza? lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty; let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea. sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us, facing the rising sun of our new day begun let us march on till victory is won. stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died; yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed? we have come over a way that with tears has been watered, we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. a. the joyful call of the first stanza gives way to a bitter recounting of history in the second. b. the first stanza's anger is replaced by the second stanza's resignation. c. the poem moves from a sense of wonder in the first stanza toward a sense of perplexity in the second. d. there is no change between the first stanza and the second. the emotions are the same in both.
Answers: 3
English, 22.06.2019 09:30
What is most likely the speakerâs reason to open with this? in approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the [fourteenth] amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when plessy v. ferguson was written. we must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in american life throughout the nation. only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.
Answers: 1
English, 22.06.2019 10:50
What should you do when refining and polishing a thesis statement? ?
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