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The Dartmouth
July 15, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Baxter: The American DREAM

One of the most interesting women I have ever met has spent 20 years of her life working with undocumented immigrants at the border of the United States and Mexico. She told stories about visiting women in overcrowded detention centers and women who came to this country under horrifying conditions looking for work, opportunity and family many of whom did not realize their actions were illegal or had been unwittingly sold false papers. She remembered a time in the last two decades when Mexicans would walk across the border to the grocery store or to go to work and return to their native country every evening. She watched as they were treated with increasing suspicion and, eventually, as criminals. She told stories about parents who awaited deportation and sat in jail while their children were handed over to child services.

It is not easy to be an immigrant in this country, undocumented or otherwise.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama gave a speech in El Paso, Texas, a town with which my friend is familiar. Obama pressured Republicans to engage with the issue in ways beyond erecting border fences and the criminalizing undocumented immigrants. With a Republican-controlled House, he faces an uphill battle. While it is possible to write off Obama's recent calls for the liberalization of our immigration laws including a path to citizenship and the DREAM Act as political pandering and preparation for 2012's election season, this is an opportunity for him to influence our nation for the better.

The United States has an embarrassing history of intolerance and fear towards immigrants. Each generation has its own fear mongers and eager immigrants who, in unsurprising retrospect, turn out to be integral parts of the American landscape. Nearly all of us in the Dartmouth community have our own immigration histories some older than others. Being anything less than tolerant and willing to seek moral justice and humane solutions to the current problems in our immigration laws is utterly hypocritical.

The New York Times put it elegantly when it said liberalizing immigration laws was a "moral and economic imperative." The people whom the president seeks to permit to become citizens of this country are already major contributors to our society. In so many cases, they pay taxes with no access to the benefits such civic duty incurs. Our often-profiteering prisons are overcrowded with mothers and fathers, as well as men and women our age, who are denied access to proper representation or a clear understanding of their situation. Even the immigrants who are legal or arrive as asylum seekers must undergo rigorous and, at times, needlessly harsh interrogations and interviews. With our current laws, the United States is wasting its time and money, all the while losing would-be immigrants. It is, in short, a mess.

I am not suggesting that there is an easy solution to this issue. A country without borders would have problems, too. I also do not wish to valorize or victimize immigrants, undocumented or legal. Rather, I believe that denying basic human rights to many immigrants is against the moral fabric and ideals of our nation of immigrants.

My mother is a federal judge and when I was a little kid, she would let me watch the naturalization ceremonies she performed. Seeing men and women from around the world say the Pledge of Allegiance in many accents and receive their very own miniature American flag and copy of the Constitution are, to this day, some of my proudest moments as an American. I saw people who appreciated what it meant to be a citizen of this country and had worked hard to achieve it. They filled me with a sense of gratitude for the immigrants in my history the pilgrims and those who came through Ellis Island, the babysitter who escaped civil-strife in El Salvador, and, today, all of my friends at Dartmouth who have come from each corner of the globe with experiences and histories that enrich my daily life.