May 19, 2010 - By Matthew Stabley, NBC4
A second-grader may have unwittingly blown the whistle on her mother's citizenship status during Michelle Obama's visit to a Silver Spring school -- and right in front of Mexico's first lady.
Margarita Zavala joined Mrs. Obama for a visit to New Hampshire Estates Elementary School Wednesday.
During a question-and-answer session, a girl raised the immigration issue, telling Mrs. Obama that her mom says that "Barack Obama is taking everybody away that doesn't have papers."
The first lady replied that they have to make sure people living in the United States have the proper citizenship papers.
"That's exactly right," Mrs. Obama added.
"But my mom doesn't have papers," the girl said.
"Well, we have to work on that," Obama said. "We have to fix that and everybody's got to work together in Congress to make sure that happens."
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2 comments:
Oh the the timing of this one! I watched this clip on every news channel last night. The thing that struck me as odd was that NBC actuallt asked the pricipal of the school about the status of the little girl's mother!! The White House correspondent said that the principal said they never ask about the documentation of students OR parents, because, as the correspondent said, "they keep referrring back to this Supreme Court decision in 1982 that guarantees a free and public education to all children regardless of their citizenship status..." She didn't even cite the case [Plyler vs. Doe] which I found rather odd. Shoudln't the news media be educating the public on the law, since it has become such a hot button issue? We are never going to be able to come together and straighten out the broken immigration system if we don't know what laws and precedents we are dealing with.
Forgive my spelling errors, oops! Oh, and just so Michelle Obama knows, this question is nothing new. My third graders say it all the time, "Barack Obama wants to send all the Mexicans back to Mexico." One of my other students chimed in, "Good, that means I can stay here. I was born in Guatemala." I had to giggle a little bit at his logic. Then, the first student said, why you laughing Ms. Michelle? You like us. They'll send you back too. Where were you born?"
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