Not far from where I live, two girls live with their undocumented immigrant parents from Mexico in a rented cottage behind a city duplex.
Maria, 7, is in the second grade at a Milwaukee public school. She speaks Spanish at home while rapidly attaining English fluency at school. She is bright, social and intelligent.
Imagine who Maria could be in 10 years – confident, close to her family and recently accepted to the state’s best university, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is one of many diverse faces of the next generation of Americans – Hispanic, bilingual and educated, despite coming from what many Americans would consider a very poor background.