Youth Without Papers Step Out of Shadows

"She was tiny and trembling and looked so very vulnerable.  Barely 15, having already experienced a lifetime of hardships since losing her mother at 5 and crossing the desert with her father, she clutched a microphone before a crowd in New York's Union Square.  "My name is Diana," she said. "I am undocumented and unafraid."  With those words last March, another young woman stepped "out of the shadows."  It began several years ago, tentatively, almost furtively, with a few small rallies and a few provocative T-shirts.  In the past two years it has grown into a full-fledged movement, emboldening thousands of young people, terrifying their parents, and unsettling authorities unsure of how to respond.  From California to Georgia to New York, children of families who live here illegally are "coming out" - marching behind banners that say "undocumented and unafraid," staging sit-ins in federal offices, and getting arrested in the most defiant ways - in front of the Alabama Capitol, outside federal immigration courts and detention centers, in Maricopa County, Ariz., home of the sworn enemy of illegal immigrants, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  In "outing" their families as well as themselves, they know they risk being deported.  But as states pass ever more stringent anti-illegal immigration laws - and critics denounce their parents as criminals - these young people say they have no choice." - Helen O'Neill, Associate Press Special Correspondent, May 19, 2012.