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Daniel Connolly: Isaias's parents came from Mexico and his father had a sixth grade education. His mother went as far as ninth grade, and neither of them speak English very well. They didn't really know much about the American school system, and when it came down to Isaias figuring out life after high school, he largely had to do it on his own. There's a number of immigrant families that don't have money, and regardless of the immigration status of the children, they're affected by that.
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We talk a lot about adult immigrants, but much less so about their children. Roughly one in four kids in the US today has at least one immigrant parent, so there's a huge portion of kids growing up in an immigrant household. Historically, Hispanics in particular have had difficulties obtaining college degrees for a wide variety of reasons. One of the main reasons I wrote this book is to highlight the human potential of Hispanic kids, because it's a shame when a student who's capable ends up dropping out of high school. That's something as a society we can't afford. We need to develop our people, our human capacity, and that's for the good of everyone, not just Hispanics and those who grow up in immigrant families.
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What kind of policies are keeping kids like Isaias from succeeding in the United States?"The path toward success in America is not necessarily clear for children of immigrants."—Daniel Connolly
I'll speak to Tennessee, which is the state where this book takes place and the one I know the best. In Tennessee, there was actually a law that was passed by the state legislature that aims to stop people living in the US illegally from getting state benefits. The legislature was trying to discourage [undocumented] immigrants from settling in Tennessee. If someone who had immigration issues applied to college, like Isaias, he'd have to pay the out-of-state tuition, which in this case was roughly $20,000 a year. On top of that, he wasn't eligible for most of the state's scholarships either, so in his case, he's looking at coming up with $80,000 for a four-year degree and doing that without public scholarships.At the time [Isaias] was applying to college, he actually had a federal Social Security number and a federal work permit. However, the state of Tennessee basically ruled that people like Isaias, children of immigrants, were still not eligible for state benefits. There are a lot of people living in this gray area, this legal status where they're neither fully rejected nor fully accepted by our society.
The bigger thing, I think, affected their mindset was just not having that many examples of people who had gone to college. I asked Isaias who he knew who went college. He could only name a couple of people, and both of them were young women. In that sense, the path toward success in America is not necessarily clear for children of immigrants. They may not have a model of somebody who's done it well. I've interviewed many [immigrants] who live here illegally. They don't live like fugitives; they don't live in hiding. But they don't have the same rights that I would enjoy as a US citizen. They're living in this gray area, and when someone like Isaias interacts with the bureaucracy of Tennessee's public universities, suddenly their immigrant status is a problem.
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At the national level, there's a tendency among some politicians to profit from divisions among people. I think it's part of human nature to think about our tribe versus the other tribe. For example, in the Midwest, there's a great football rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan. You'll hear people yelling "Michigan sucks" or "Ohio sucks," and if you think about it, they're basically the same. There's not much difference between people who live in Michigan and people who live in Ohio, but it's part of our human nature to think of ourselves in groups or tribes. There are certain politicians who use that with immigration issues, basically saying these people are from another tribe, and they're dangerous.What do you think about Donald Trump's rhetoric on immigration?
A lot of what Trump is saying isn't about the real world. It's about fantasies of what he would like the world to be. It's about white identity and white nationalism. It's not about actually addressing immigration or related issues. The other point I'd make is that the peak immigration years were in the early 2000s, if we're talking about immigration from Mexico. If you build a wall now, that doesn't address the people who are already here. Trump talked about a deportation force, and yet at the same time, there are some reasons to be skeptical about that and its feasibility, cost-wise.But the big thing that I say in this book is that there's a case to be made for addressing the question of children of immigrants separately from adult immigrants, and that's something we typically don't do. I say in the epilogue that over 90 percent of young Hispanic kids in America are US citizens. These are people who are going to be part of our country no matter what. The central argument of the book is that children of immigrants have great potential, and it's in everyone's interest as a country to develop their potential.Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.