Imagine a world where you couldn't dream of a better future, but others around you could. Where you knew that no matter how much you studied, or how hard you worked, you would never realize your full potential. Where your friends could go on to college, law school, or medical school. But no matter how smart you are, you would never enter a courtroom as a lawyer, read a medical report as a doctor, enter a classroom as a teacher, or travel overseas as a soldier.
Imagine this world of yours. This world without dreams. Now imagine that there is a ready explanation for it all: your parents. That is, your parents made a mistake at some point, and now you're paying the price.
For the most part, this is a silly hypothetical. Of course you wouldn't pay for your parents' mistakes, right?
Unless you're an undocumented student. In that case, all you have to look forward to is a classroom that you cannot enter and a door that will remain locked until Congress passes the DREAM Act.
The American Nightmare
When undocumented immigrants enter the country illegally, they are consciously breaking the law, and should be held responsible for their actions. And they are: under the present system, undocumented immigrants can't work legally, qualify for federal loans, or collect federal benefits.
But what about the kids they bring along with them? Those kids didn't decide to immigrate illegally. All too often they are brought to the United States as babies or toddlers, where they grow up like any other child in this country: speaking English, playing basketball, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and even watching The Simpsons. Just like you and me, they go to the Homecoming Game and worry about their Prom Date.
Yet there is one major difference in the way undocumented students grow up in this country: they have almost no chance of ever going to college. And without college, they'll never really emulate the teacher that inspired them, or graduate from law school, or swear the Hippocratic Oath to become a doctor. They go to sleep at night with no dream to look forward to. All because of a decision that someone else made.
How can this be?
In 1982, in Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court considered whether Texas could deny school enrollment and withhold state education funds from undocumented children trying to attend elementary school. Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan explained that the restrictions on educational opportunities needlessly targeted kids by imposing a "discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children can have little control." Before striking down the law, the Court made a rather unremarkable observation: children don't decide to immigrate illegally - their parents make those decisions for them.
So why punish kids who are just trying to educate themselves for something they couldn't control?
But nearly thirty-years after Plyler, undocumented students still face unique barriers to higher education because they can neither work legally nor qualify for financial aid. As a result, only a small fraction of an estimated 65,000 undocumented students who graduate from U.S. high schools each year are able to pursue a college degree.
This glass ceiling traps high achieving students, who want nothing more than to go to college. These children, who have grown up and lived their whole lives in our communities, include Ivy League-bound honor roll students and star athletes, talented artists and homecoming queens, and of course, aspiring teachers, doctors, lawyers, and even would-be U.S. soldiers.
Perversely, in the very country where children are taught that hard work and determination can make any dream come true, students are punished for being ambitious and diligent.
There is perhaps no worse nightmare than knowing you can do something (like go to college), but finding out that you are unable to do so because of someone else's decision.
The American DREAM
Given the increasing importance of a college education, it's finally time for Congress to end this absurdity and pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act ("DREAM Act"). The DREAM Act, a bipartisan proposal, would provide qualifying students the opportunity to go to college or enlist in the military. To qualify an immigrant must have lived continuously in the United States for five years or more, have good moral character, and either earn a two-year degree from an accredited college or serve at least two years in the U.S. military within a six-year span.
If passed, the DREAM Act would restore every student's right to finish her studies and to continue dreaming.
Opponents of the DREAM Act believe the measure would reward and incentivize illegal behavior. Yet, how can you incentivize a baby to immigrate illegally? How can you incentivize a 12-year old who has no control over where he lives or goes?
The DREAM Act doesn't reward students for their parents' illegal behavior; all it does is fix a system that currently punishes them for their parents' decisions. It's not easy to get on the Honor Roll, to graduate at the top of your class, or to get admitted to Princeton. And it's certainly much harder to do so if your parents are undocumented. So why punish success?
Others say that the act would only encourage even more illegal immigration by making it easier for the sons and daughters of undocumented immigrants to qualify for student loans. But since the Act would only apply retroactively - that is, only to students who arrived before the Act was passed, and not to those that arrive thereafter - no such incentive exists. Ultimately, the only activities the Act incentivizes are educational attainment and military recruitment.
And even if these incentives did exist, and immigrants crossed the border just so that they could one day see their children go to college - are we not willing to risk opportunistic immigration to avoid creating a permanent underclass based on parentage?
Then-Senator Obama, when running for President, stated that these students are "American children, for all intents and purposes." In the same debate he called the Act's passage a "top priority" which could be accomplished immediately. In fact, during the campaign the Obama camp pointed out that he helped pass the Illinois version of the DREAM Act as an Illinois State Senator.
And yet, each year for the past decade the DREAM Act has been introduced as legislation, in one form or another, but has never received a vote. Now, more than ever, Congress needs a new sense of urgency to finally pass the Act. Not just for the 65,000 undocumented students who will be entering their senior year of high school this Fall, but also for our own sakes.
In an age of economic uncertainty, the best way to ensure long-term economic stability is to encourage higher education. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush recently pointed out that educating our nation's immigrant population enhances our economy's ability to grow, prosper, and expand amidst its fiscal challenges.
Arne Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education, has pointed out that to produce the world's best-educated workforce, is not just a question of national pride, it is an economic imperative. Indeed, immigrant students who go to college later step into higher-paying jobs, increasing our tax revenue and consumer spending. This is a win-win for America: more education and more jobs.
Thirty years ago the Supreme Court struck down restrictions on educational opportunities that needlessly targeted undocumented students. But these students' aspirations ended at high school graduation.
Let this be the year that Congress allows students to dream again.
David Perez, a graduate of Yale Law School and Gonzaga University, is the chairman of the National Latina/o Law Students Association.
Do you encourage people around the world who have children to break US laws and come here illegally like your parents did, since you have the Dream Act now, or do you "burn the bridge after you have crossed it" and say NO to illegals?
Don't use non-answering answers.
To open the door of freedom an opportunities to those undocumented Americans is the moral thing to do because the United States of America is their only country.
Legal immigrant children also go on to serve this country as doctors, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, etc, but legal immigration cost money and take time (averaging 10 years); is it fair for generations of legal immigrant children when they had to pay money and waiting in line for years (they are still waiting in line right now) before obtaining American education, while these people didn't?
Since you are so eager to put the blame of being here illegally on their parents, then are you implying that for each Dream Act eligible student, their parents must be subjected to the 3/10 year bar rule, which, as you know, is the current law?
Being in the US is a privilege of itself already, these people have enjoyed free K-12 American education while all of the children of the three war-torn countries are still suffering, all of them want to be here to avoid possible IEDs, yet the illegals want even more, after illegally obtaining the safety of this counrtry.
In your argument about them not being able to obtain financial aid, you purposely left out the fact that in 10 of 50 states, they receive in-state college tuition. In CA, they made 32% increase in tuition for all because they provide in-state tuition for the illegals. They want even more still after receiving in-state tuition.
Please address each
"being in the US is a privilege": if you live here, what gave you such a privilege?
"yet the illegals want even more": that is an insulting way to address those kids, probably they have been living in this country longer than you ...... it makes them more American than you are?
"illegally obtaining the safety of this country": that is a very funny thing to say, when you look for safety, any kind of safety there is not a legal or illegal way to get it, you just get it.
You keep calling them "the illegals" as if they were monstrous aliens from planet X, not they are not, they are human beings as probably you are, and those kids definitely are Americans (without documents) probably more than you (if you really are).
Finally those kids will be able to live in peace in the United States of America, their country
To think that people whose main effort in life has been to steal, lie, and cheat their way ahead will suddenly change to honest truth telling citizens is beyond absurd. Give us a break! This bill will simply encourage MORE illegal immigration since we will not guarantee a free or reduced cost college education for all who can sneak in even after this bill is passed.
kid 1 goes to high school in Sate X, is a natural born citizen, wants to go to college in State Y, must pay high cost "out of state tuition", Too bad, but that is a fact, jack!
Same kid, tells State Y college he/she is undocumented. Dream Act says kid 1 gets in state tuition.
Example 2
Kid 1 continues to file taxes, vote, and other wise maintains their ties to his/her original state while "out of state". Kid wants to return to school in original state, either as a transfer or to go to graduate school
Kid does right thing and tells state what he/she has been doing. State says that he/she was not present in the state, thus is not a resident for purposes of in state tuition. State says kid must pay out of state tuition because kid was not present in state for 6 months prior, even though kid was paying out of state tuition for other out of state school, and had filed and paid taxes in state for all that time and voted and maintained historic ties to the state. Honest kid gets screwed by out of state by both states.
Kid says he/she is undocumented and gets in state tuition... not a problem under Dream Act.
immigrant has anchor baby at taxpayer expense, now qualifies for various aid programs from food stamps, to Wic, to Section 8 rental, to AFDC, and sends kid to public school, has more kids to get bigger checks, while dad, listed as unknown on birth certificate, is working and living in the family home, kids join gang to sell drugs and commit various crimes, and get thrown in jail at taxpayer expense, and then have more children that are raised by the dole, repeating the whole process.
For every dream success story there are multiple non success nightmare stories.
An ILLEGAL ALIEN should NEVER take a slot that could be filled with a CITIZEN or LEGAL immigrant in any university!
We need to take care of our own CITIZENS and LEGAL immigrants. Many of them have degrees in their hands and are without a job. Those are the people we need to take care of.
A lot of undocumented immigrants enter the country quite legally. Overstaying a visa need not be a conscious breaking of the law, as anyone who ever got a speeding ticket, because they were distracted, can tell you.
Those who are truly undocumented are the illegals who have illegally entered the US and have committed a CRIME by doing so. In most cases, they are FELONS as well. It is not too hard for illegals to get a passport before they leave their home country to come to the US. Yet they do not do so. There is a very good reason for that since it makes it hard for law enforcement to know who they are, and to check their background. If caught committing a crime, they can use any name they wish. They also are a big market for forged documents, and have the ability to avoid their criminal background by coming here. The undocumented need to be treated as the crooks that they are.
thanks for understanding..I been wanting to join the military every since i graduated from high school, but I simply wont be accepted..so now i am finishing my college career..I just hope that one day I will be accepted in the military..reason? well i really love this country and I am willing to defend it at all cost...