Letter to the Editor

One candidate in this presidential race has consistently supported driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, even when it was not popular to do so. One candidate seeks to vastly increase the number of legal immigrants to fit the real needs of U.S. employers, in order to keep Latino families together, and to ensure undocumented workers' rights. One candidate has been endorsed by prominent immigration law professors and experts including Jerry Kang of UCLA and Bill Ong Hing of UC Davis, which makes sense, because this same candidate has won praise from top experts for his anti-poverty, technology and health care plans as well.

One candidate in this race knows what it means to be a first-generation American. One candidate knows what it means to be poor in America. One candidate knows what it means to be a minority in America.

This is the same candidate who won praise from Senator Kennedy for working as hard as anyone, and much harder than any other Senator now running for president, on the recent Senate immigration bill. This same candidate now cosponsors the DREAM Act to allow undocumented students to attend college in the U.S. and has committed to making its passage a priority when he's president. This same candidate won the support of Latinos in his home state by working tirelessly for years to protect their economic interests. He is not the black voters' advocate, he is not the white voters' advocate and he is certainly not the advocate of corporate America - he is the one candidate never to have served a corporation, the one candidate who refuses to take funding from lobbyists. The polls repeatedly show that he's the one candidate who can beat McCain in November. And the facts repeatedly show that he is the one candidate with the experience, the character, the record, the skills and the solutions strong enough to give real hope.

Barack Obama is the one.

Jason Vieyra-Preston

Junction City, Kan.