(Photo: Dreamactivist.org)
Ten years after the
DREAM Act was first introduced in Congress and five months after advocates failed to get it past a cloture vote to end debate in the Senate, Democrats
are trying again to get this key legislation passed. But the obstacles seem even greater than they were last December.
The House, which passed the DREAM Act last year, is now firmly in conservative Republican hands. And the Senate, where a filibuster derailed an up-or-down vote, is not only less Democratic than it was in 2010, but also all five Democrats who voted against cloture are still in office. The hope, according to Majority Leader Harry Reid, is that compromises on immigration enforcement may get the bill passed this time by bringing around the Senate Democrats who poleaxed the proposal last year, plus a few Republicans. Two Republicans who voted for cloture last year, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, are still in the Senate.
The DREAM Act is a straightforward proposal for elementary justice. It would put undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children—before they were 16—on a path to citizenship as long as they have no criminal record and if they commit to serving two years in the military or getting a two- or four-year college degree. They must have lived in the country for at least five years and, in the version of the act proposed today, be 35 or younger. That would include a potential of about 1.2 million people, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 755,000 currently unauthorized immigrants might satisfy the DREAM Act's college or military service requirements and gain citizenship.
The Senate bill was introduced today by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, where the state senate just passed its own version of the DREAM Act, which would set up private scholarships, provide other financial opportunities for undocumented students and encourage high school counselors to get special training to better understand the educational opportunities available for young immigrants. Durbin's bill has 30 co-sponsors.
Besides upping the eligibility age from 29 to 35, the new version of the DREAM Act would allow undocumented students to benefit from in-state tuition rates, something the House-passed bill last year specifically forbade. The prohibition on receiving Pell Grants remains, however, In the House, Reps. Howard Berman of California, Illinois' Luis Gutierrez and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida introduced the bill today.
In a press conference, Reid said he would seek to gain Republican support for the DREAM Act by backing mandatory E-Verify, a program requiring employers to check the legality of potential workers. He did not say when the act might be brought to the floor.
Many of the young people who would benefit from this bill speak no language other than English, have never even visited the country of their birth, and are now trapped by a system that penalizes them with deportation because of something their parents did and they had zero control over. The United States is their country. And we should act like it.