In many corners the concept of DACA is a fair and compassionate one, giving reprieve to children brought into the country illegally by their parents. But the way the program is lawfully mandated and implemented matters.
My late mother moved back to her parents' homeland in the 1990s when Ukraine and Russia, along with the thirteen other former Soviet republics, became independent states. Drawing on her experience as a lawyer in Canada, she served as executive officer of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation, an NGO she helped to found.
I did not go into comedy to escape anything. I went into comedy because I had parents who thought it was a reputable way to earn a living.
During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn.
Proper British nannies put the child ahead of everything. They do not like to see children used as accessories, carried around in slings for the convenience of the parents' social life. They want a proper set-up, where the baby is rested and happy, not shown off to all-comers.
Perhaps the single most important thing for a child is to be with a loving, supportive family. And all things being equal, any child of any race should be placed with any qualified parents without restriction or special conditions.
I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.
No child should be raised in a system. A system isn't a parent. Even the system knows this, which is why the Children and Family Services Division puts so much effort into finding permanent homes for the kids who are never going to be reunited with their birth parents.
I do well with peoples' parents, but I've certainly had friends who were not. One of my best friends is pretty consistently reviled by his girlfriends' parents!
I have to give importance to my personal life, my family, parents, and sisters. I hope I can strike the right balance.
My father came from Germany. My mom came from Venezuela. My father's culturally German, but his father was Japanese. I was raised in New York and spent two years in Rio. My parents met at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they had me there, and then we moved to New York. I'm not very familiar with Mississippi.
We're all comedy fans in my family. My parents mainly wouldn't let me watch stuff that was either annoying to them, or just garbage. My dad wouldn't let us watch 'The Flintstones' if he was home, because he said it was a rip-off of 'The Honeymooners'. But he would let us stay up really late in the summer and watch old 'Honeymooners'.
Ripping children away from their parents has a particular shameful history, both in this country and around the world.
When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.
There's so many influential albums my parents would put on. Like the first album I ever heard was 'Help!' by the Beatles and from there I just loved rock music.
I'm a Roman Catholic. Or was. I was brought up that way and used to say my prayers every night, but I don't pray to God any more. I might use the usual phrases I picked up from my parents, 'Oh, if God spares me next year...' or 'Please God...' but they're only phrases.
The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small matter of dogma and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief.
My mother never watched me train in Romania. She wasn't allowed, it just wasn't done back then. My training was paid for by the government. My parents were not at the Olympics with me, either. I never expected them to be.
I knew everything in the forest. I had a secret home tree, where I pretty much lived. I also liked rooftops and streetlamps. My parents would get calls saying 'He's out there again.'
My parents were part of the Christian Family Movement, where we would have Masses said in our home and rotate with other families. I recall priests coming to our home and saying Mass in our living room. Catholicism was really woven through so much.
