A nation of immigrants

We are - most of us - immigrants or descendants of immigrants... most of us 'undocumented'.
[Me? To the extent that I know - German, Welsh (dad); Polish, English (mom)]

The Founding Document that GOPers love to cite is the Declaration of Independence, usually referencing that bit about being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

Most of the document is a legal brief against King George III.
Among the many specific torts alleged is the following:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Yep - the Founding Fathers faulted King George for restricting immigration!

The current anti-immigration frenzy has created situations like this one:

Living the DREAM: Undocumented Youth Build Lives in America
Julia Lurie, The Atlantic
10 April 2012
When he reaches for his earliest memories, Nico Lopez recalls clenching his small fists around his seat belt buckle and straining to listen to the smiling flight attendant's directions for take-off. As he watched Guatemala City disappear beneath him, he pulled his feet onto the seat, wrapped his arms around his knees, and quietly began to cry. It was 2001, and Nico was seven years old.

Now a tall, quietly confident young man with dark hair and green eyes, Nico will soon graduate with honors from a public high school in Stamford, Connecticut. Despite having grown up in a neighborhood where gunfire is likened to the doorbell ringing -- you hear it all the time and don't really think much of it -- he is the leader of the student government, often the only non-white member of his AP classes, and, in his spare time, an English tutor for recent immigrants.

You know how the rest of the American dream story is supposed to go: Nico receives a merit-based scholarship to college and finds a job that helps him support his mother, who has worked as a housekeeper for the past 17 years. He gets married, has second-generation kids, and serves as a shining example of how any American can succeed if he tries hard enough.

Except Nico isn't technically American. He overstayed his tourist visa as a seven-year-old and is now one of over 2 million immigrant youth who entered the United States as minors and now live here illegally. Federal law prohibits Nico from going to college at a public university, while, somewhat counterintuitively, Connecticut state law gives Nico access to in-state tuition though not financial aid.

As a result, Nico's choices lie along a cruel spectrum. On one end, he could adopt the tricks of the trade of living as an undocumented person in America: he could find a low-paying job that pays cash under the table, have a friend at the DMV make a license for him, go to doctors who don't require social security numbers or insurance cards, and sweet-talk bank tellers into opening accounts. Like the vast majority of undocumented residents, Nico could squeeze into America's shadowy corners, away from the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

All because Lou Dobbs woke up one day and decided Mexicans were evil!