“Just like my immigrant dad, Dreamers energize America,” The Seattle Times
By Mike Vaska
Special to The Times
It wasn’t until after college that my dad told me his secret over breakfast at Denny’s. I knew he was an immigrant, graduated from public high school, served in the U.S. Army and was a community leader on the Eastside. But the rest of his story was that of a 13-year-old in a German refugee camp at the end of World War II, who was given a fake birth certificate and false name by a Lutheran minister so he would not be returned to his homeland, the Soviet Union, most certainly to the forced labor camps.
My dad kept his story a secret because he feared deportation. This fear is shared today by 790,000 Dreamers — that is, children unlawfully brought to this country before age 16.
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