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Walter’s Wish
By
Published: Jul 02, 2013
Category:
Beyond Classification
Gracias a Dios por Kelli Porthan.
If you’ve been reading about the immigration bill, you know that the price of getting this legislation through the Senate was the commitment to spend $40 billion over the next decade at the Mexican border.
The 700 miles of new fencing are just the beginning. This legislation also calls for 20,000 more border agents, a fleet of drones and a visa entry/exit system at all air and sea ports. Quite the list — and under the terms of the Senate bill, “all those security measures must be in place before any undocumented immigrant can become a legal permanent resident and receive a green card.”
This is a mammoth profit machine for the usual set of corporations and all those who get hired. It is also, at this writing, totally unnecessary — there is no border problem. In the anti-immigrant hysteria, it’s been hard to get this across, but here’s the fact: Illegal border crossings are at net zero. For a number of reasons — better border enforcement, the difficulty of getting work in the United States, improved job prospects in Mexico — more undocumented immigrants now return to Mexico than come north. Our border is secure. That $40 billion would be money wasted. (Not that the House will pass the Senate bill, or any.)
While people like me watch from afar and despair, Kelli Porthan does something every day to improve the lives of immigrants.
She’d like some help.
[Disclosure: Decades ago, after the death of her parents, my wife became an unofficial daughter to Kelli’s mother and stepfather, Mary Kay and George Spalding. Later, they “adopted” the child and me. I danced at Kelli’s wedding. I know, and do not much like, her dog.]
In 2007, when Kelli was a third grade bilingual teacher for Latino students in St. Paul, Minnesota, she learned that the high school graduation rate for Latinos was less than 50% — and less than 17% of Latino college students finished four years of college with a degree. Another teacher might have shrugged: hey, what can you do? Kelli started Walter’s Wish.
Walter’s Wish — Walter is Kelli’s aging Chihuahua — is a weekend mentoring program for Latino students in the fifth, sixth and seventh grades. For two-and-a-half hours, college-educated mentors and lecturers expose these kids to science, technology, engineering and math — and reinforce the mantra of personal possibility. It’s a family affair: Parents must sign a contract.
Does this program work? So well that a local community service group (CLUES, or Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio) has acquired Walter’s Wish for its "Learning Together" initiative. And a recent article is nothing but praise. And watch this:
I write this because Walter’s Wish seems vastly more valuable than a border fence, and yet it’s never going to get the kind of financial support that’s powering that fence. You can shrug and say, yeah, well that’s how the world works. Or, as we celebrate the holiday that speaks to the best in us, you could consider helping some Latino kids get excited about college — and get there.
You can give to Walter’s Wish at the website (scroll down to the DONATE button) or send a check to Walter’s Wish Fund, 120 Arundel Street, St. Paul, MN 55102.
Gracias a Dios por Kelli Porthan. And thank you.
