High school students pretend to be illegals for school project
Here’s one I am confident we’ll be hearing about on the talk shows soon. A high school teacher in Ohio decided to have her students take on Latino roles (this is a Spanish language class by the way – white students learning to speak Spanish.)
Try it legally, Erica Vieyra told her 40 senior Spanish students at Olentangy Liberty High School. Fill out the correct documents, follow the proper steps. And then, after they spent days completing the actual paperwork from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, she took out her red ink pad and stamped a big, fat DENIED across every request.
Because we know that’s what happens to every single one. That’s why no one has legally entered the USA in 3 decades. /sarcasm .
Now, she told the students, come illegally. Forge your documents, find a way across the border. Then, research real ads and find a place to live in Columbus. Figure out what it would cost, how to get food. Plan how to survive.
The students had to go to real businesses and ask for Spanish-language job applications. They had to visit a bank and ask for new-account documents written in Spanish.
Brilliant. Convince them that the only way to go is to enter illegally. Most asinine of all on the part of a student and on the part of a reporter. You see, young Yana was adopted from a Russian orphanage in 1994:
“This project was about me,” Yana said. “I realized that, for a grade, I was about to re-create what my parents had to endure to give me the opportunity to live the American dream. That scared me.”
Ahh yes, I can see myriad similarities between a person illegally entering this country and attempting to survive on their own, and a set of US citizens who are wanting to adopt and raise a 5-year-old. /sarcasm.
And of course, no article would be complete without an obvious lie:
This is the fifth year that Vieyra has assigned this project to students in her Spanish V class. Each year someone, a teacher perhaps, maybe just a friend, cringes: “They say, ‘That’s such a hot topic. Are you sure you want to go there?’ “
She always answers yes. But she cautions that the point isn’t to sway the students, only to teach them a little empathy.
Teaching a little empathy by convincing them that entering illegally is the only way to enter? I think not. Lord help me if I am that naive.
*standard disclaimer: I am not in favor of imprisoning or deporting all illegal immigrants; I am not opposed to immigration; I am not in favor of treating illegals as less than human; I am strongly in favor of reforming our immigration system, of building a wall to keep illegals out, and of treating illegals who break further laws being instantly booted out of the country.
Posted in Catholic Moral Teaching, In the news... | 
6 Comments »
December 19th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I am a student in her class and I just want to say that it is most asinine thing to believe that this is indoctrination. I hope that you reasses your values so that you can learn to have some empathy for a situation that you obviously know nothing about.
If you did know anything about this situtaion, you would know that our highly educated teacher was showing us both sides of the issue and not just about the illegal simulations that we created.
I love seeing how there are people who only take into account one side of the issue and not both. I love watching one-sided thinking in action. I do see your disclaimer, and I would think that if you were in such support of reform of immigration policies of the U.S. you would be open to seeing the opposing side of the situation. These people come to our county because it is their last hope for bettering their lives, even if it means coming into this country illegally.
I don’t support illegal immigration, but I do not support how our country handles legal immigration.
But I guess that it is naive of me to believe that you would take these things into consideration.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Thanks for posting. Your tone is immediately defensive, which I find interesting. You see, most of us bloggers who talk about current events use news stories as our sources. And, as naive as it may be, we have to presume in most cases that news stories are basically accurate. The reason I didn’t consider “another side” is because the only source I had was the news story I linked to in the post. Tell you what. Type up a post explaining where the news story is inaccurate or incomplete, and I will post it on this blog, so you can get the real story out.
Oh, and I can’t resist. You say you don’t support illegal immigration but you don’t support how legal immigration is handled by our country. In your high-school mind, does the fact that we don’t handle legal immigration properly excuse people breaking our laws to enter?
December 19th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
“Oh, and I can’t resist. You say you don’t support illegal immigration but you don’t support how legal immigration is handled by our country. In your high-school mind, does the fact that we don’t handle legal immigration properly excuse people breaking our laws to enter?”
You’re blatantly twisting the words of this student by posing that question. They essentially stated what you did in your original post. They DO NOT agree with the current legal immigration system and believe it should be reformed. Regardless of how the legal system works, they DO NOT think illegal immigration is right. In fact, they think it is outright wrong. It’s called ILLEGAL immigration for a reason.
“I am strongly in favor of reforming our immigration system, of building a wall to keep illegals out, and of treating illegals who break further laws being instantly booted out of the country.”
December 19th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I asked a question. I didn’t twist anything. There are a lot of folks out there, regrettably even within the Church, who essentially excuse illegal immigration because our legal means of entering the country are so in need of reform. I simply asked this student if that was the opinion they held also.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I think that the way people are handling this issue is way out of line. The majority, if not all, of the Spanish V students who completed this project agree that they were taught both sides of the issue. So when people who were actually involved say they were, what’s not to believe?
The issue of illegal immigration is a major topic throughout the United States lately. People need to learn about it, and as everyone is saying, learn to have empathy toward the situation.
December 20th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Never said I didn’t believe the students. In fact, I invited the student who commented on this post to write up their side of the story (i.e., that the students really heard both sides of the story) and I haven’t received a reply.
Seems a bit ironic that we have to empathize with people who willingly break our laws. Who’s out there screaming for us to empathize with rapists, murderers, child molesters, and embezzlers? Oh, that’s right. The liberal psychobabblers are.