Commentary

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Five years after leaving my hometown of Upper Marlboro, Md., I returned to my elementary school to speak about being an Olympian.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Everyone knew I’d helped the United States speed skating team win a bronze medal in the 5000-meter relay. But there’s another important part of my story I don’t always talk about: I’m a Korean immigrant who grew up in the U.S. without immigration documents.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; This month marks the 50th&nbsp;anniversary of the approval of the birth control pill by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960. As even golden anniversaries go, this is a big one. The pill literally changed everything for women. This anniversary should both stir memories of changes big and small and spark action to ensure that every woman who wishes to do so, benefits from the pill and other forms of birth control.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Black stand-up comedians make a living telling jokes about getting stopped by police officers all the time for the “crime” of “Driving on a Sunday afternoon while Black.”</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; The joke is true. It is true as has been documented by court-ordered studies in New Jersey and California.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; I have asked myself many times in many different ways over the past few weeks this one question, why, why us. You see at my age I just want to be at peace and live my life. A lifetime of tension filled scenarios should be replaced with the freedom to be who I am and not feel the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention when the word Mexican is spoken in a crowd of strangers. Or feel that my rights are infringed upon simply by being in Arizona and looking and acting like an undocumented worker.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Linda Greenhouse in the (April 26, 2010), wrote “I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon. Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.” Greenhouse was referring to a state law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States.”</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; The French have been so romanticized by Hollywood that most of us carry images of dashing French Foreign Legionnaires fighting in deserts and jungles all over the world.</p>