EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the first of a two-part series.
The second part will be in Monday’s PDN.
FORKS — It’s an immigrant story that’s played out sadly for more than a century:
Parents bring their children into the United States of America, hoping to give them a brighter future.
But while this country’s opportunities stem from the beacon of free education, some immigrant children will have nowhere to go once they’ve finished school.
Federal law prohibits illegal immigrants — including those carried into the country by their parents — from working.
And no amount of study, no high school diploma nor bachelor’s, master’s nor doctoral degree, makes an illegal immigrant legal.
For decades, undocumented immigrant parents have been coming to the North Olympic Peninsula to find underground work in the woods of Forks or the farms around Sequim.
And since free schooling is something this country offers every child, regardless of where he or she was born, those immigrants’ offspring do have a shot at an education.
But for the child brought here without permission from the U.S. government, the future is cloudy.
Congress has tried to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy, but no real changes have come about.
