Immigrant student anxious about proposed bill

By Jaclyne Badal

The Collegian

The US Senate is reconvening today, and one Fresno State student is anxious to see what will happen next in Washington’s illegal immigration debate.

Alondra Flores, 20, crossed the border illegally with her parents when she was just a baby. Her family now has a visa, but it expires next year. The current debate has left her with heightened feelings of uncertainty about her future.

“It’s no guarantee that they’ll get the visa again,” she said.

Flores said her parents risked everything to pursue the American dream. She said some family members were captured and beaten by immigration services, while others died crossing the border.

Flores said the issue is personal for her, and she joined the protests against the House’s new immigration bill.

The bill would make it a felony to be in the country illegally, would erect a fence along one-third border between the United States and Mexico. It would penalize employers who hire undocumented workers.

Talk in the Senate has been more favorable toward illegal immigrants. Politicians there have proposed a guest-worker program and a way for many illegal immigrants to gain citizenship.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., thought they had brokered a compromise deal just before Congress recessed earlier this month, but talks broke down within 24 hours and the Senate failed to pass the complex bill.

The compromise bill included the following provisions:

Illegal immigrants who have resided in the United States for more than five years could eventually become citizens if they remain employed, pay a fine and have passed a criminal background check.

Those that had been in the country from two to five years could return to a port of entry outside the United States and apply to work here, perhaps receiving permanent resident status.

Those who arrived in the United States after January 2004 would have to leave the country and apply for visas the traditional way.

Each party blamed the other for failing to reach an agreement.

Flores said the talk in the Senate is a start but more needs to be done.

“If they didn’t make it so hard for people to arrive here in the United States, we wouldn’t have so many people dying here trying to cross the border,” she said. “They’d actually come across legally.”

Flores said many people fail to realize that a lot of illegal immigrants don’t fit the stereotype of the poor farmworker who speaks only Spanish. Flores is a former AS senator who has a full-time job in order to pay tuition.

“I work as hard as anyone else in this country to get an education,” she said. “People, when they see me and what I do, they kind of turn around and don’t want to see that I’m an immigrant.”

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