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the Real Messages in News Stories Janet Kuypers 04/04/11     So I was watching one of the new channels (I think it was MSNBC), and a woman reporting stated that there was the 4 year-old boy who was trapped in Guatemala. She is from New York, but after visiting Guatemala with her grandfather, they were stopped at Dulles International Airport when they found out that her grandfather had an illegal U.S. entry charge from more than a decade ago. So they wouldn’t let her (Emily is her name) continue home, and she had to go with her grandfather back to Guatemala.     And as I was hearing this story, I was thinking that her parents would get it settled so they could bring her home again... And that is when I heard the MSNBC new reporter state that her father, who is not a legal citizen of the United States, will hopefully find a way to get her back into the U.S. Again.     And then the reporter went on to the next story, because even though they have 24 hours to report this stuff, they wouldn’t dare give enough details in a story to give both side to a story.     I mean, she said Emily’s father was an illegal immigrant to the United States. Not that he was born south of the border and is living here on a work VISA, or that he married an American woman. So when I started to look up more information on this story, I saw that her grandfather was a non-citizen on a valid work visa that allowed him to travel. THEN I read that her parents (the ones illegally living in the United States, that are here in New York that they apparently are not deporting) either had to have Emily sent to Guatemala, or allow officials to put her in a juvenile facility in the United States, where she could be put in foster care (or otherwise kept away from her parents). I then read in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/federal-officials-4-year-old-us-citizen_n_839700.html) “If Emily’s parents had gone to pick up their daughter from authorities, they could have risked deportation along with her grandfather.”     Well, of course they risked that. There should be few options for immigrants who entered the country illegally, like the Ruiz family, who only has a young child like Emily born in this country with legal U.S. Citizenship.     From the Huffington Post I also read: “Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) intervened on behalf of the Ruiz family on Tuesday, sending a letter to DHS calling for them to return the girl to her mother and father. ... “This bureaucratic overreach and utter failure of commonsense has left a little girl -- a U.S. citizen no less -- stranded thousands of miles from her parents,” Israel said in a statement. “I’m working with the family and their attorney to reunite Emily and her parents and asking for DHS to do a formal review of how this could have happened.”     Most Republicans would probably tell you exactly how this happened: an illegal immigrant couple decided to have baby of their born in the United States so they would have an anchor baby as an excuse to stay here. And I was surprised that the report I saw on television did not highlight that this infant girl had an entire family of people who did not have U.S. Citizenship.     But who knows maybe it’s just me noting the liberal bias of the news program I happened to be watching that day.     Then again, maybe I’m the odd one here in noting that there is something more wrong with an entire family living here illegally and trying to retain more rights as U.S. Citizens, even though they are not U.S. Citizens.     I often write these editorial/essays by finishing with more questions. But I wonder with this story, if I am the only one who thinks more about the fact that people had a child here to try to legitimize their existence in this country when they are not U.S. Citizens, and more importantly, does anyone else think about the fact that people are not working on removing he illegal immigrants from this country instead of shipping the 4 year-old to a country that is not her own. Copyright © 2011 Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.