By Anne Saker
The Oregonian
September 21, 2010
In a small classroom at Portland State, the university president, two elected officials and a pack of students rallied Tuesday around a cell phone delivering the voice of Hector Lopez.
"I want go home to Portland," said Lopez, 20, from Mexico City. "I spent my life in America. I just want to come back home, where I belong."
Lopez is among 2 million young people across the nation who grew up in the United States without citizenship because their parents are undocumented immigrants.
A bill in Congress would create a course to citizenship for those like Lopez stalled in the Senate Tuesday amid debate over a Pentagon spending measure.
Lopez was 6 weeks old in 1990 when his parents came into the country illegally and settled in Milwaukie. Siovhan Sheridan-Ayala, his Seattle lawyer, said that when Lopez was 9, his parents paid someone to file immigration papers. They never knew that the person never did the work or that a judge later issued a deportation order.
Lopez did well in school and became senior class president at Rex Putnam High School. He got a Social Security number and an Oregon driver's license. He coached Little League and did hundreds of hours of community service. He aimed to enroll at Portland State to study marketing.
But on Aug. 23, federal authorities picked up Lopez and his father on the 11-year-old deportation order. On Sept. 1, they were shipped to Mexico -- where Lopez said Tuesday he doesn't speak or write the language and cannot find a job.
Lopez's defenders called a news conference Tuesday at Portland State to urge passage of the bill in Congress, the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors or DREAM Act.
"The country is better for us being here," said Portland State President Wim Wiewel, who emigrated to the United States as a young man. "We are fools if we do not change the current system."
Jeff Cogen, chairman of the Multnomah County Commission, and City Commissioner Amanda Fritz -- also an immigrant -- said their governmental bodies have unanimously approved resolutions asking Congress to pass the bill.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2010/09/milwaukie_mans_case_shows_why_immigration_law_is_needed_friends_and_supporters_say.html
