So a Peruvian student in the country illegally, Lucy Allain, now of New York, last week accosts Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and asks him why he does not support the Dream Act.  The expected confrontation occurs.  He withdraws his hand as if she were trash, she said later.  Aides move Romney away from her.  I can imagine how she felt.  Romney is simply wrong on the issue.  More so, in his world, Romney would be called a cad.

But Lucy is wrong on another, vital matter. Asked by Jorge Ramos on Univision’s Sunday news program, Al Punto, for whom she would vote for if she could, she responded that she would vote for neither Romney nor President Obama, who has failed the HispanicLatino community – and the nation – by not pursuing immigration reform, not pushing for the Dream Act and pursuing a deportation program that in the end will prove counter to the national interest if it stands over a protracted period of time.

For Obama and for Romney, who presumably always want to keep the national interest in sight, they are not acting on the very information that all Americans need to ingest on this issue.  The HispanicLatino population is going to keep this country alive in the future, with individuals like a tax-paying Lucy Allain with a 4.0 grade point average very much the kind of person the country will depend on to pay its way in the future when HispanicLatino workers will have to support millions of non-HispanicLatino retirees on Medicare.

For the moment, though, Lucy herself is behind the curve a bit.  She might not understand that HispanicLatinos who can vote but choose not to in effect are giving half of a vote to Romney.  Worse, allowing other voters whose whole vote will count for Romney is to give others the power to determine more of her life than she can at the moment.  Lucy might not know that non-engagement has cost HispanicLatinos dearly through the years.

Lucy also might not fully appreciate that if Romney is elected President, he will almost surely have one or perhaps two opportunities to name new Supreme Court justices.  Given the vast array of legal challenges that already are making their way to the court – from redistricting to voter identification laws to health care – a Court with a majority of Republican-appointed justices almost certainly will make life more difficult for all HispanicLatinos not just individuals like Lucy (whom we must work doggedly to make legal).

More important, in leaving the impression that others ought not to vote for either, she is encouraging them not to vote when HispanicLatinos might make the difference in Democrats attaining control of Congress.  And what if the election were poised to be a Democratic landslide and non-voting HispanicLatinos prevented Democrats from achieving a veto-proof majority in the House and the Senate so that they could in fact pass legislation like the Dream Act?

Lucy Allain’s 4.0 GPA is stellar, and I am sure that her curriculum included course in government.  What she perhaps did not absorb are the politics that drive elections and governance itself.

I hope she can take time to reflect on and retract the impression she has given HispanicLatinos about their civic duty – which I see for myself as fighting for immigration reform that makes Lucy a voting citizen.

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