An illegal immigrant who came to the U.S. as a child is set to become the youngest school teacher in the Dallas Independent School District. The young woman obtained the authorization to work under President Obama’s executive amnesty plan called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Melissa Simon arrived in the United States at age three as an illegal immigrant. As a beneficiary of President Obama’s DACA program, the previously undocumented alien now has a legal permit to work in this country. She is currently working as an intern for the Diaz Law Firm in Dallas, according to KHOU CBS11..
In the fall, the now 18-year-old woman will turn her focus back to education and will teach in the Dallas school district.
Simon graduated from W.W. Samuel High School in Dallas last month. By the time she graduated, the young woman had already completed a two-year associate degree.
Jennifer Tecklenburg, Simon’s high school principal told the CBS affiliate, “They do six years of school in four years. That’s pretty impressive for a 17-, 18-year-old student.”
“If the students can be as motivated as her and complete the associate’s degree, the world is open to them,” she concluded. She said Simon was one of her best and brightest students.
She is now participating in a program through Texas Tech University referred to as TechTeach. She is expected to complete both her bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate by next year, at the age of 19.
The program at Texas Tech is designed to take undergraduate students and move them to a simultaneous completion of their Bachelor of Science degree in Multidisciplinary Studies and teaching credentials, the school’s website states.
To qualify for all of this, Simon applied for the DACA deferred action program. To enter for this executive amnesty program created by the Obama Administration, a person must be under the age of thirty-one and have arrived in the U.S. illegally before the age of sixteen. The person must have also resided in the U.S. for the entire time since their arrival. They have to have graduated from high school, or currently been enrolled in school and must not have ever been convicted of a felony or “significant misdemeanor.”
Simon said she will begin teaching elementary school students. “I can relate to many of those students and the way that they’re growing up,” Simon said.
She will be co-teaching during the 2016-17 school year while finishing her TechTeach coursework at Eastfield College, a part of the Dallas County Community College District.
Two other DREAMer high school graduates from Texas made news last month when publicly bragging about their illegal immigrant status. One young lady, Crockett High School Valedictorian Mayte Lara, took to Twitter and boasted, “Valedictorian, 4.5GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh, and I’m undocumented,” Breitbart Texas’ Lana Shadwick reported in June.
A few days later, Breitbart Texas’ Merrill Hope reported another school’s Valedictorian, McKinney Boyd High School’s Larissa Martinez, used the occasion of her graduation speech to brag about her “undocumented status” and take a swipe at GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The two students created a social media storm as readers reacted to their bold declaration of breaking American law and reaping the benefits of the Texas education system.
Bob Price serves as senior political news contributor and is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
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