Fearing border check, students sit out trip Associated Press Monday, July 03, 2006 2:21 p.m. ET
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1543441 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. 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. 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. ___ Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
