Transcript
Martin Torres
Head Consul, Salt Lake City Consulate of Mexico
I would like to make a comment, too. On one hand, these young kids that achieve, they have overcome all odds. Those are the very best that we have and you are taking them and you are keeping them and we lose them. In Mexico, education is totally free. You can go from elementary school to a PhD for free. President Sergio, he never paid a penny and he was a PhD from Yale. How did he do it? Because he was good student, he excelled, he came here to the United State and got a scholarship, he got a Masters and a PhD and he never paid a penny. The argument that sometimes is raised that people come here to get a free education is totally false. They come here because they are following their parents and they have no other choice. And they are faced here with the greatest of challenges. They had to beat all those challenges, they had to catch up with their classmates and when you see people like Judge Gutierrez, you are talking about the very best. You see someone like [Rose Jacobo], they are the very best. I think that we both win, that's why as part of the duties that we have here in this country as consulate, is to always try to do a lot in education. We also want to contribute to those great efforts that are done here to educate those kids because we consider them ours but they are also yours, so we share them. What I wanted to point out here is, first: they could have an easy life as far as education is concerned in their country. When they come here, they have to face many different challenges, and when they overcome those challenges, you are talking about the best of the crop and I believe that the one that is absolutely winning is this country by keeping and educating these kids. And we also have to recognize that there are very remarkable individuals that work in education, we just heard from one of them, we just saw a recording of another one of them that really do a remarkable job that I would even call an apostolic job in educating, in reaching out to those kids. So I was deeply, deeply touched by the piece, but I think it is important to point out that the fact that they come here and excel is a guaranteed success for anyone that is contributing to their education and it is for the benefit of the community here.
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