This will be short.
Like many of you, I'm eagerly awaiting the SCOTUS decision about DACA (deferred action for childhood arrivals). I haven't delved into the legal oral arguments yet, but I have been somewhat following it online as time allows.
But I've noticed a trend among DACA recipients and their allies to put forth examples of really remarkable people who could/would probably be deported upon repeal of DACA.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why that's necessary and how it helps appeal to people who aren't already aligned with us.
My beef isn't with that- it's a pretty age old method of gaining enough empathy from the larger public and it often works.
That said... You know? Some DACA recipients sit on their asses and play video games all day and that's ok, too. Some of them were C students who never went to college, never served in the military, and have lame ass jobs that don't pay well.
They're like the rest of us- unremarkable, average people.
And that's ok.
I know a lot of immigrants, legal and not, and their kids are all Americans, legal or not. They're kind of assholes because they're young, they have their earbuds attached to their heads all the time and they roll their eyes at pretty much everyone who's old enough to legally drink.
What I'm saying is that they're not wonderful people because they're teenagers and teenagers are just inherently awful people.
And that's exactly why it's so cruel to send them to a country they don't know or remember. The little shits are as American as apple pie and they'll grow up and become fully functioning, empathetic, and responsible adults.
But, yeah, for now they're assholes. But they're OUR assholes.
They don't have to all be future or current Nobel Prize winners or Medal of Honor recipients. They can just be loud, stinky, hormonal, sarcastic, emotional, and irrational people because that is what you and I were when we were young and our parents may have threatened to send us away when we were that age but for Dog's sake we'd never accept the government doing the same.
So I understand the respectability politics of it, but I'm just gonna call bullshit and say that a lot of the people we're protecting are just mediocre.
And the thing about mediocre people like me and you and them is that, just like remarkable people, being home is always the most important thing.
And I will be beside myself if the little assholes I know don't get to keep their home.