S'matter, estudiantes ilegales, afraid of being deported?

That's right, illegal amigo, if you leave the U.S. you just might not be
allowed back in.

Fearing Border Check, Students Sit Out Trip

July 03, 2006

PHOENIX (AP) - Students who placed second in a national underwater robotics
competition won't be going to next year's contest because of the possibility
of their illegal status in the United States.

The students, from Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, recently beat out
high school and college students from across the country, including the
prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and fell only to the
reigning champs from the Marine Institute of Memorial University in
Newfoundland, Canada.

On the heels of their success, the students learned that next year's contest
will be held in Canada, and that they won't be going because their coaches
won't risk taking students who may be in the country illegally.

Many Carl Hayden students are Hispanic and from poor Phoenix neighborhoods.
Schools aren't obligated to ask about residency status or citizenship, and
they don't.

Neither Allan Cameron nor Fredi Lajvardi, the teachers who coach Carl
Hayden's robotics team, know which students among the 50 or so members are
legal residents.

"Our belief is that every kid can join our club and participate," Cameron
said. "We're not going to pick and choose based on something our kids don't
have any control over, like their birthplace."

Not willing to risk that a student could be refused re-entry to the United
States, Cameron and Lajvardi said, the team won't compete in Canada.

And they have every reason to believe that would happen.

In 2002, four students from Wilson Charter High in Phoenix were detained at
the U.S.-Canadian border on a side trip to Niagara Falls while competing in
an international solar-powered boat competition in Buffalo, N.Y.

Their plight raised awareness of children brought into the country illegally
by their parents. Smart and articulate, the teenagers were held up as
examples for the federal Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors,
or DREAM, Act. Floundering in Congress since its introduction in 2003, it
would allow college students who entered the country illegally as children
to legalize their status.

In 2005, a federal judge threw out the deportation case against the Wilson
students on the grounds that they were racially profiled. The students, now
in their 20s, are awaiting a government appeal.

The Carl Hayden teachers don't want to see their students in the same
predicament. Team captain Annalisa Regalado, 18, said the students are
disappointed but understand. It would have been an expensive trip anyway.

Besides, there's talk that Carl Hayden, along with students from Arizona
State University and Chandler High, could host their own underwater robotics
competition here.

"As long as they get to do something with their hands, build and have fun,
they're happy," Regalado said.

The underwater robotics competition is put on by the National Science
Foundation, a nonprofit government agency that promotes science and
technology. Students from across the country must build and pilot robots to
complete a series of underwater tasks.

In the summer of 2004, four teenage boys from Carl Hayden won the robotics
competition, stunning educators at the event and garnering worldwide media
attention. Those students were undocumented immigrants, too. Now they are in
college - one at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute - on private
scholarships.

GeorgeWashingtonAdmirer...

Attendance at that institution costs $35,000 per year. I bet there
were U.S. citizens who would have LOVED to have been given those
scholarships. Every cent that goes to an illegal alien is one less cent
to assist needy U.S. citizens and legal residents. I'd love to find out
what "private" individual or organization gave the illegals those
scholarships.

Not only is it disgraceful that illegal aliens receive
race/ethnicity-based "affirmative action" preferences over white U.S.
citizens, they also -- outrageously -- receive scholarships (public and
private) which white Americans are ineligible for. In eight U.S. states
at present, for example, illegal aliens are eligible to receive the
super-low, publically-subsidized "in-state tuition" benefit which U.S.
citizens are not entitled to receive, instead being required to pay
triple and more compared to what the illegals pay.

It should be completely illegal to give illegal aliens ANY kind of
scholarship, WHETHER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE. Any educational institution
which does so should be shut down. Any If the Scottsdale Culinary
Institute receives ANY government aid it should be withdrawn
immediately.

GeorgeWashingtonAdmirer...

Since then, the robotics team at Carl Hayden has grown from a dozen kids to
50. The team continues to win awards, including for their volunteer work to
get junior high students interested in engineering and science through
mentoring and building robots.

In the past three years, every senior on the team - about 25 - has gone into
the military or college, most on full scholarships.

delduck3...

Yes, this is exactly the kind of riff raff we don't want in our
country. America should be exclusively reserved for semi-literate

Bob LeChevalier...

The schools are run by the states. The states do not enforce
immigration laws.

Bob LeChevalier...

The second part tends to be for the rich ones. But lots of people who
aren't rich have no problem violating the speed limit.

assholes who spend all their time playing "Grand Theft Auto" and
logging in with names like Busta Capp.

Now, the team is closely watched at competitions. Sometimes there are
snickers or comments that the team may have just been lucky in prior
contests.

But, "We believe in ourselves," Lajvardi said.

And this latest win cements their reputation as solid and creative
engineering students.