Have You Any DREAMs . . .

With the DREAM Act, which would offer an easier path to citizenship for the mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants brought here under the age of sixteen by their parents, all but scuttled for now, President Obama's decision to allow possibly up to 1.4 million  illegal immigrants of such circumstances to stay in the United States and get work permits is only fair.  These young people have lived their lives here knowing no other country.  Many of them are law-abiding people, and some of them have even served their adopted homeland in the military.  Republicans have accused Obama of bypassing the law.  Is Obama acting illegally to help those who are here illegally? Well, I don't see how prosecuting people for immigration violations when they're in the United States through no fault of their own makes anything resembling sense.  But then, folks like Mitt Romney - who partook in immigrant-bashing in the Republican presidential nomination contest and is now trying to backtrack to avoid losing the Hispanic vote - have a lot of incoherent attitudes toward immigration that make even less sense.

Obama's plan would allow illegal immigrants to stay if they can prove they were brought to the United States before they turned sixteen and are younger than 30, have been here for a minimum of five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED or served in the military.  

Right now, Romney's trying to cater to Hispanics, but his efforts fall short in terms of credulity.  After having expressed concern with hiring landscapers possibly using illegal immigrants because he was "about to run for President," he's trying to show how much he understands Latinos and their experiences.  

Oh yeah . . ..  As a Mormon, he's obviously aware of how Brigham Young led the Saints to the Wasatch Valley in what is now Utah - in 1847, when it was still Mexican territory.  Although the Mexicans probably didn't even know the Wasatch region was theirs - it was practically terra incognita then - it was still south of the 42nd parallel, partly the U.S.-Mexican border of the time. 

So, a lot of Mormon children ended up being taken into foreign territory through no fault of their own.

Ironic, no?