Redefining Community Service

According to the Washington Post, Montgomery County (Washington area) schools will give community service credit hours to any student who attends pro-immigration rallies. These credit hours will go towards a graduation requirement of 60 community service credit hours. The only requirement is that they go to a rally under the supervision of a school-approved non-profit community group, in this particular case, CASA.

The group responsible for organizing the rally? You guessed it, none other than CASA, a group that does work with and for the Latino community. Now, CASA probably does some great things for immigrants, but they have also recently been involved in some not-so-spectacular activities.

Apparently, a group of minutemen have been discreetly photographing CASA day-labor centers in the hopes of catching employers who are out to hire illegal aliens. They are basically trying to catch employers doing something illegal. (Since the government is choosing to turn a blind eye regarding this matter.) The executive director of CASA de Maryland, Gutavo Torres, wasn't thrilled with this turn of events and had some threatening words to share. According to WorldNetDaily, "We are going to target them in a specific way," Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland told the Maryland Gazette, speaking of the Minutemen volunteers who have set up a surveillance site across the street to discreetly photograph contractors who pick up day laborers at the center.

Going out with their own cameras will only be the first step his group takes.

"Then we are going to picket their houses, and the schools of their kids, and go to their work," Torres said. "If they are going to do this to us, we are going to respond in the same way, to let people know their neighbors are extremists, that they are anti-immigrant. They are going to hear from us."

Last time I checked, Senor Torres, wanting employers to follow the laws of America and hire LEGAL citizens, is not an "extreme" view. And we are NOT "anti-immigrant". We are anti-ILLEGAL. They are NOT one and the same.

Stephen Schreiman, president of the newly formed Maryland Minuteman Project, had this to say of the Project's tactics, ""We're going to go after these [contractors] at the state and local level because these people aren't paying taxes. We're going to take these people and through a vetting process determine which ones are not paying their taxes and doing business in an inappropriate manner and then turn them over to the appropriate authorities for prosecution. That should put a damper on the hiring of illegals."

Sounds, to me, like a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

So, perhaps now, you can see why many parents (and others across the U.S., myself included) have a hard time stomaching the idea of students in our public school systems being allowed to earn credits toward graduation by participating in a CASA-organized event on immigration.

The problem is not that students are participating in a political event. There is nothing wrong with that, and frankly, I think it's a good experience. The problem comes when a school system begins promoting a particular political view (in this case, supporting illegal behavior) to its students. There is no mention of students being able to earn credit if they attend anti-immigration rallies. In fact, it seems unlikely, given that the rally must take place under the supervision of a school-approved group.

I also think the definition of "community service" is pretty broad in this case. I always thought community service referred to actually getting your hands dirty and helping those less fortunate, those who could not do work for themselves, working in a homeless shelter...that sort of thing. I hardly think that standing around outside on a nice spring day with a group of your best buddies, shouting your support for illegal behavior, is doing anything good for anyone, except those breaking the law.

Let's face it, this is, for the vast majority of those students who will attend, an easy way to both get out of class for a day and earn a credit towards their graduation. These kids would be much better served sitting in a classroom, learning math and science, english and music, so that they could someday put these necessary skills to work and do some real community service.