Antonia Rivera is just one of dozens of Orange County college students who have come out as illegal immigrants in the hope that such attention leads to passage of amnesty for them. But the Anaheim High School and UC Irvine graduate pushed the envelope further by getting arrested this summer on Capitol Hill for refusing to disperse while participating in a sit-in to protest Congress' failure to enact immigration reform. The soft-spoken Rivera's name and picture soon were plastered across anti-immigrant websites, all of which howled for her immediate deportation. But the gamble by Rivera and her fellow DREAM Act advocates seems to have paid off: The Obama administration has delayed proceedings against her while it mulls what to do with her ilk. She continues to appear in the media, an articulate, bilingual reminder to the world of how assimilated her foreign-born, American-raised peers really are.
