These "IN" children are in Nashville Scene's 2011 People Issue

Along with Nicole Kidman, these two children are featured in this year's People Issue of the Nashville Scene.

From the story:

Ademir was 3 when he and his mother crossed over from Mexico to reunite with his father and find a better life; Adriana was 5 when she came here; Nicole was 10 months old. "I don't remember much of it," says Adriana, an energetic, literature-loving high school junior, when she thinks back on crossing the border with her mother. "No one told me if it was bad or not, just that we'd have a better future." Since she was only an infant, Nicole, a poetry-writing, soccer-playing sixth-grader who volunteers at her local hospital, has no memory at all of coming to America. But she's sure of one thing: "I'm very glad that I'm here," she says.

Read more here.

About the reference to "IN" children in the headline: People on either side of the Prohibition debate were called "wet" and "dry." In the immigration context, the word that I have settled on to describe what I am fighting for is "indivisibility," as in the pledge of allegiance to be one nation, indivisible. If you are here, you are us. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., from his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Describing the two sides of the immigration debate as "in" and "out" is as simple as the Prohibition-era "wet" and "dry." Those who favor indivisibility are in, and those who generate outsiders out of those who live among us are out. A recent poll showed that over 60% of Tennesseans are "in" - just like these students.