Stop Gap Measures for the Undocumented

Today my attention was drawn to a really uplifting piece of news headlined on CNN. Child immigrants in the US can now apply for a temporary status, which will grant some 1.7 million “young undocumented immigrants” protection… for two years at least. Obama was clear in the announcement that “this isn’t amnesty, this is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It’s not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure.”

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Honestly, that statement in itself sounded really, really awful to me. As a person will full citizenship in another wonderful & free country I say to your stop-gap measure “Geeze, you really outdid yourself Obama.”

Except…

It must be just the best feeling in the world to get some recognition.

The cynic inside me knows that government policies (especially in election years) are a great way to pick up the swing on the campaign trail. This one also set off some alarms in my head because it made me realize the extent of the information they will be able to gather on a previously un-tapped population that would otherwise remain anonymous. Think about how that can be used. (Like really… republicans you can probably capitalize on this one if you don’t get your panties in a knot that quickly.) It’s almost enough to make you think that maybe the whole thing isn’t that great.

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But…

I can’t imagine what it must be like to live somewhere for 16 of the 17 years and still feel like an outsider. Part of the undocumented identity is formed around the basis of being an outsider.

I mean… I don’t have Instagram and I feel like an outsider to the trendy and sleek IPHONE community. (You know…the magical place where life looks amazing from EVERY angle.) I’m excluded from entry, chained to an out of date black berry, and when/if I do finally get an IPHONE I’ll be so far behind the trend that I won’t feel any more part of the community then I do right now. It’s a pale comparison, but feeling excluded superficially makes me realize what kind of person I would become if my citizenship was taken away… or never existed to begin with.

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Putting aside the origin of how these kids arrived, and their parents who brought them here, and the infringement on economic and social opportunities of hardworking Americans… and any other beef a population would hold up to the topic of illegal immigration, can’t we agree on one thing:

Don’t we all just want to belong?