“If we don’t have avenues for people to come here legally to work or to build a home here, I’m going to be really crude right now — we’re not going to have anybody around to wipe our a–es because we don’t have enough people in our country now to fill the jobs that we have.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5733541&forum_id=2],#48987973)

Rebecca A. Balint was born at the United States Army hospital in Heidelberg, West Germany,[2] on May 4, 1968,[3] the daughter of Peter and Sandra (Couchman) Balint,[4][5] and raised in Peekskill, New York.[3] Her grandfather was murdered on a death march from the Mauthausen concentration camp during the Holocaust; her Hungarian-Jewish father immigrated to the U.S. in 1957.[2][6] She graduated from Walter Panas High School in 1986.[3] In the sixth grade, she admitted to having a crush on a female classmate, for which other students taunted her, including writing "lezzie" on her locker; she came out to her friends after high school[3] and to her parents while she was in college.[7] Balint became interested in politics at an early age, which she later attributed to having been raised in a family affected by the Holocaust and observing how government actions affect women and minorities, including gays and lesbians.[3]

Balint attended Barnard College of Columbia University before transferring to Smith College.[8] She graduated magna cum laude from Smith with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and women's studies in 1990, received a Master of Education degree from Harvard University in 1995, and completed a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2000.[8] At Smith College, Balint was coxswain for the women's crew team, who nicknamed her "the Admiral" because of her leadership skills.[3]

Balint moved to Vermont in 1994,[2] and taught middle school history and social studies and worked as a rock-climbing instructor at Farm & Wilderness summer camps in Plymouth, Vermont, in addition to teaching at the Community College of Vermont in Brattleboro and writing a column for the Brattleboro Reformer.[3][9][10][11] She met Elizabeth Wohl in 2000; they formed a civil union in 2004, moved to Brattleboro in 2007, and got married in 2009, after same-sex marriage was legalized in Vermont. They have two children.[9][10][12][13]

Balint supported the Vermont Progressive Party in the 2000s, and supported their gubernatorial nominee, Anthony Pollina, in the 2000 election.[13][14] She served as a town meeting representative and on the Development Review Board in Brattleboro.[15]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5733541&forum_id=2],#48987978)