New York Times Room for Debate invited DreamActivist and other experts for a response to a piece on mixed immigration status families. Instead of talking about the fundamentals of the DREAM Act, Mark Krikorian from the hate-organization, Center for Immigration Studies (which even opposes legal immigration), decided to go after the family in this story:

In exchange for “rewarding work as a draftsman” and “the chance to showcase his skills and get around the city, into well-appointed offices and high rises,” he has wrecked his marriage, torpedoed his wife’s career, consigned his smart, industrious daughter who was a few years from graduation in Ecuador to a life of illegality, and raised a son who clearly prefers his parents’ homeland. Is it really Congress’s responsibility to clean up this man’s mess?

With the way Krikorian rants about ‘chain migration,’ one can only deduce that he advocates creating two sets of families in the United States: the ones who do not marry non-citizens and hence do not have to worry about immigration laws, and the ones who marry non-citizens and have families outside of the United States. Bravo.

Here is the response from NYSYLC:

Since the publication of “A Family Divided by 2 Words, Legal and Illegal” in this Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, the members of the New York State Youth Leadership Council have felt both proud and in awe of the courage demonstrated by our member and her family who were featured in the article. Her story, raw in its depiction and complex in human drama, is also our story. It is a story replicated in thousands of our own households. It is a story of courage unafraid to live outside the shadows created by a broken immigration system.

For immigrant youth, documented or not, telling your story is about documenting and giving voice to invisible lives. Our lives are much like your own family’s: imperfect and dysfunctional but also loving and self sacrificing. Such is the nature of human stories. Why should undocumented families be judged any differently?

Yet, Mark Krikorian’s response to the article is disturbing, not only for its lack of logical arguments, but rather for its righteous and personal attack on our member. Resorting to such attacks only exposes his root sentiment of hate and intolerance towards immigrants and their families. If we are to come together to try to mend a broken immigration system, let’s do so without pompous arrogance but with tolerance and fairness.