Real Americans

I've written about this before, but it's worth repeating, especially when backed up by an eminence gris of the Grey Lady:

"Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.

No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?

O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia."

The dumbing down of America has not happened by accident. It's resulted from an unrelenting effort by Christian conservatives and, by way of cynical vote-pandering to that group, the Republican Party over the past few decades. For the religious right, it's about not having to think about stuff that challenges their beliefs: stuff like science, stuff like the historical record of The United States. For the Party of NO, it's about the Rovian realization that the less educated the public, the more easily peddled are lies. It's about his brainstorm that religious fundamentalism equates, in large measure, with gullibility. It's about his party's satanically disingenuous -- and very successful -- manipulation of those folk.

Thankfully, God has seen to it that we still have immigrants coming to our country: people in whom the American dream remains alive; people born of parents who value education nearly above all else. People with that old-fashion and newly-diminishing ethic of working for a goal. For the U.S., it's a literal life-saver.

Now, I have no problem with the idea of immigration reform, with shutting down (to the extent that it's possible) all illegal immigration. I don't even take issue with limiting access to our tax-paid social network (although I think a little situational compassion is called for, along with the making of distinctions between those who came illegally for illegal purposes, and those who came in desperation and who've been working and doing right.) There was a time when such luminaries as George W and John McPOW were reasonable on the issue: closing borders but stopping short of wholesale deportation, especially of those who've been here a long time, assimilated, paid taxes, pitched in. Unfortunately, such reasonableness has vanished from the Party of NO, who, fueled by the hate-filled teabaggers and their RWS™, seem always to need some new earth to scorch.

My concern is that in our seething xenophobia (well, not "ours." Theirs.) we'll close the doors to such people as those listed above. We need them. And until and unless we reverse the trend of willful self-destruction of our educational system by the same people whose voices are loudest, at the moment, in that Party of NO, and who, if they had their way, would bar the door forever, we'll need them more and more.