Stuck on Stupid?

KATU News broke the story last week; evidently, Oregon DHS is at it again. Having failed in their half-witted attempt to deport Gabriel Allred, they’re now trying to deport 2-year-old Faith Cephus to Mexico, to live with people she doesn’t know and who are not related to her. Well, that’s only partly true. Faith would be living with a couple of half-siblings. It’s the people who would be adopting her that she’s not related to.

What’s up with that, anyway? Is this just more DHS business-as-usual, or is there something of a more nefarious nature going on? I don’t know if legal precedent for deporting U.S. citizens has already been established, or whether DHS’s recent efforts are meant to establish legal precedence, but in any case I think it’s bad policy.

DHS should concern itself more with preventing injustices than it does in perpetrating more of them. Are the DHS honchos stuck on stupid, or have they nothing better to do?

Allred Update

Okay, now it’s official. Gabriel Justice Brandt, formerly known as Gabriel Allred, whom I wrote about in December of last year, is now the legally adopted son of Steve and Angela Brandt. While that in itself is good news, even better news is that young Gabe won’t be setting any precedents as the first U.S. citizen to be deported to a foreign country by overreaching DHS staffers.

As a condition of the adoption, Gabriel must learn to speak Spanish in addition to his native English. It’s not a particularly onerous condition, and mastery of a second language can only work in Gabe’s favor. In fact, I think it would behoove every U.S. citizen to learn a second language of their choice. There are, after all, advantages in knowing what other people are talking about.

In the spirit of being true to the idea of practicing what one preaches, I’m now fully engaged in learning a second language. Due to time constraints and the difficulty of teaching an old dog new tricks, as a strictly practical matter I chose a foreign language that would be the least challenging to learn.

I’m happy to report that my Canadian as Second Language (CSL) studies are progressing nicely, and that I’ve already achieved higher levels of proficiency and fluency than I initially expected. Not bad, eh?