The latest version of the DREAM Act, also known as the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (S. 729), was introduced on March 26, 2009, by Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) in the Senate. In the House of Representatives,the bill is called the American Dream Act (H.R. 1751), and it was introduced that same day by Howard Berman (D- CA), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA). With Democrats in control of both Houses and President Obama having supported the DREAM Act in its prior incarnations, hopes for passage are high.
For those unfamiliar with the Bill, ILRC provides a very helpful overview. The DREAM Act would enact two major changes in current law:
- Permit certain immigrant students who have grown up in the U.S. to apply for temporary legal status and to eventually obtain permanent status and become eligible for U.S.citizenship if they go to college or serve in the U.S. military; and
- Eliminate a federal provision that penalizes states that provide in-state tuition without regard to immigration status.
Specifically, Under the DREAM Act, most students with good moral character who came to the U.S. at age 15 or younger at least five years before the date of the bill’s enactment would qualify for conditional permanent resident status upon acceptance to college, graduation from a U.S. high school, or being awarded a GED in the U.S. Students would not qualify for this relief if they had committed crimes, were a security risk, or were inadmissible or removable on certain other grounds. The Senate bill contains an additional requirement that the student be under age 35.
One of the best analyses on which young people would be helped comes from Marcela Sanchez in her 2007 Washington Post Desde Washington Column. She talks about the "1.5ers",
"a member of a generation who came as children with immigrant parents to the United States. One-point-fivers are neither first-generation immigrants, adults who immigrated to the United States; nor are they second-generation, children born here of immigrant parents.
These young immigrants are different from their U.S.-born siblings.
They tend to be "the most bilingual," said Ruben Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California at Irvine who has been studying immigrant children since the 1960s and who coined the term "1.5 generation." Often quickly learning English, they serve as interpreters for their non-English-speaking parents. Their second-generation siblings are more likely to lose their parents' language and by the third generation most speak only English.
They also are high achievers, working to make good in the eyes of parents who made considerable sacrifices on their behalf. Some too, if they were old enough when they came to the U.S., are motivated by the difficult conditions that they left behind. As Julita put it, "I wasn't going to go to college where I am from....I came here hungry to learn, to get ahead."
On the flip side, 1.5ers are less likely to run afoul of the law. Despite the myth that immigrants are more prone to criminality, study after study has found that the chance of incarceration is greater among second-generation Americans."
It's hard to think of a downside to this Bill. Helping law-abiding, hard-working, high achieving young people is as American as apple pie. If you would like to help, you can contact your Congressional Representative. We'll post more news to this blog as the Bill winds its way through the legislative process.
