Undocumented in Higher Ed

Following up on yesterday's post, I now find a piece by Katherine Mangan, "Illegal Voices:  Undocumented Students Describe Uncertain Futures," in the most recent Chronicle of Higher Education.  Here's Edilsa Lopez:

The first year we were in the States, I didn't go to school. I was 13, and my siblings and I worked a lot. We painted numbers on curbs because that was my mother's boyfriend's job. My mother didn't want me to go to school, but one day, I just walked over to the high school and signed up. They placed me in ninth grade.

I didn't speak any English when I arrived, so I was put in ESL classes. The teachers saw I was a good student. I got a note from my English teacher saying, "You're going to be very successful. I believe in you." I got so motivated that someone believed in me. By my junior year, I was taking AP classes and learning about college. My mother took my two younger siblings back to Guatemala and left me and my sister alone.

Read her story, and three others, here.

Undocumented immigrants: signs of hope

Three interesting developments:

1.  I was struck by this Sunday's public observation by Colin Powell on NBC's "Meet the Press" that undocumented workers have worked on his house (transcript). This recognition, following on George W. Bush's efforts on immigration (out of step with Republicans then, and off the charts now), might go far to set this conversation on a bi-partisan, pragmatic footing.

2.  The NYTimes, on the front page, has an article on the thus-far-quiet Mormon support for immigrants.  This support has been made public by the editorial stance of The Deseret News (Salt Lake City), leading to some lively pushback from its readers.  Like the Catholic Church, support for immigrants in LDS country -- inspired by large numbers, in this case, of Spanish-speaking converts -- comes largely from the top of the institution, and clashes with the broadly conservative social sensibilities of the most fervent rank-and-file members. 

3.  Taking up the question from the perspective of Jesuit higher education, I note that Fairfield University's Center for Faith and Public Life has just made this announcement, that the

Ford Foundation has awarded Fairfield University's Center for Faith and Public Life a $200,000 2-year grant to implement a mixed-methods research study in collaboration with Santa Clara University and Loyola University Chicago to survey and understand the legal and social contexts, attitudes and current practices in Jesuits schools of higher education in the United States regarding undocumented students.

Taking as its starting point the Catholic search for the common good, the results of this study will be used to strategize ways to meet the needs of these students, particularly at the 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities.

When "respectability" is not a choice for you

A recent essay in Wall Street Journal by Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins, and W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, connects the dots between job insecurity, marriage rates, and religious practice for working-class Americans.

In "The Generation that Can't Move On Up," they report that without a path into the wages and job security once possible for those without a college diploma, that is, "slightly more than half of all Americans between the ages of 25 and 44," the social anchors also fall away, compounding their struggle.

Their point is not to cluck their tongues at the non-churchgoing and those in "irregular" family arrangements.  Rather, they simply observe that the stability of marriage and the community of religious belonging -- with the supportive checks and balances that these can offer -- seem unattainable to those who see no way forward, economically.  This problem has been put forward before, as noted by this blog.  But Cherlin and Wilcox hit home with an important caveat:

"... the working class is not a cultural vanguard confidently leading the way toward a postmodern lifestyle. Rather, it is a group making constrained choices."

The U.S. Catholic church -- with its wealth of experience drawn from both its parishes and social ministries in low-income communities and its broad reach into the middle and professional class through its network of Catholic colleges and universities -- seems to be well-poised to engage this disconnect, particularly given its own well-developed understanding of the social role of mediating or intermediary institutions.

I wonder how we could do this?

"Mama Grizzlies?" Not a good idea

From today's Connecticut Post (posted Friday, print edition Sunday), my op-ed on Sarah Palin's "Mama Grizzly" movement -- her suggestion that all we need to do to fix this country is rear up on our hind legs and roar. Bottom line:

Mama Grizzlies don't produce jobs for other grizzlies. They don't organize to care for weak or vulnerable or disabled grizzlies. They don't drive innovation, they don't relocate easily, they don't change careers. Their ability to strategize doesn't get them past lunch.

Check it out.
UPDATE 8-18-10:  Gail Collins and Stacy Schiff have a back-and-forth at the NYT website on the Mama Grizzly phenomenon. I check in as comment #7...

Prop 8: quote of the day

At the Atlantic wire, a round-up on the question of whether allowing gay marriage will lead to polygamy.  Daniel McCarthy has made an observation that I find to be central to the whole issue -- echoing, to some extent, the work of Paul Griffiths I cite in the previous post.

"The question of polygamy is completely separate from that of gay marriage," dissents Daniel McCarthy at The American Conservative:  "One may follow on the tails of the other, but there's no reason, even by the state's peculiar logic, why that must be so. (Certainly plenty of societies have had polygamy without gay marriage.) Conservatives are right to see large implications behind the liberal view of marriage, but they have failed to confront the fact that the liberal view of marriage was already triumphant long before gay marriage appeared on the horizon."  [my emphasis]