Tag: DREAM Act

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Today marks the completion of the second week of the DREAM Now series. I am sorry I was not able to get a letter out on Wednesday.  Too much travel and not enough sleep led me to come down with a soar throat and a fever on Tuesday.  Thankfully, I’m starting to recover, today.  If you’re not getting enough of your DREAM Now fix I recommend reading Matias Ramos’ post on why he stood up during Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) speech at Netroots Nation.

Thanks in part to the supporters of the DREAM Now Series,  Reid is now on board with pushing DREAM Act this year.  Most of the credit for turning Reid, of course, should go to courageous undocumented youth activists for their civil disobedience in Reid’s office and making their presence known during his appearance at Netroots Nation.  While Reid still needs to be pushed, most of our efforts to get the DREAM Act enacted, this year, should now shift towards securing the last few mostly Republican Senate votes we need.  The National Council of La Raza has a list of Senators who have not yet publicly committed to voting for the DREAM Act.  If your Senator is on that list, you better start getting to work. 

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

This post will mark the completion of the first week of the DREAM Now Letters.  This social media campaign has been an immediate success, which is in large part due to the historic actions of DREAMers this week. 

Major bloggers from across the net, which I will link to below, have already cross-posted both Mohammad Abdollahi’s and Yahaira Carrillo’s stories.  The letters even made a brief appearance on memeorandum, a news aggregator that I’m addicted to.

If you haven’t read about it, yet, on Tuesday, 21 DREAM Act youth were arrested on Capitol Hill.  Nativists’ heads are already exploding at the notion that undocumented youth could openly declare their immigration status, get arrested, and not get deported.  David Bennion, my co-blogger at Citizen Orange, has the best write up of the action, by far.  It’s new media at it’s best.  He was actually there while it was happening. 

From ABC News:

Mohammad Abdollahi, an undocumented Iranian immigrant, takes the finger-pointing in Congress over stalled immigration legislation personally.

The gay Ann Arbor, Michigan, resident, who was brought to the United States illegally when he was 3, now faces deportation to a country he has never known and where homosexuality is a capital crime.

Abdollahi, 24, and two other illegal immigrant students dressed in blue graduation caps and gowns Monday staged a sit-in at the Tucson, Ariz., offices of Sen. John McCain, who has withheld support for legislation that would give conditional path to citizenship for Adbollahi and thousands of immigrants brought here illegally at a young age.

These young people have been living, as they say, “in the shadows” for years, some for more than a decade.  In the absence of any real comprehensive immigration reform, they are taking matters into their own hands and agitating for justice now.  They are tired of hearing our representatives talk a sympathetic game and then do nothing.  They are demanding both Republican and Democratic representatives do something.

These students, Mohammad Abdollahi, Lizabeth Mateo, and Yahaira Carrillo, were eventually arrested and transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where they will await deportation, unless someone does something.

We lost on HCR.  Plain and simple.  The only mistake is to think the bill couldn’t have been worse.  We could have co-ops and triggers, you know.

But I don’t really care.  Political loss is no stranger to the left here in the US of A.

This weekend, I will witness what we won, only one of the jewel treasures won for ALL Americans from the left.

People whose only wish is to become citizens of the United States of America will be gathering in Washington D.C. on March 21.

And their idea of the spirit of being American is not of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, not of Anita Bryant or John Wayne or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Roberts.

Their inspiration is Harvey Milk and gay liberation.

It is now a fact that Harvey Milk was a great gay American, and the American story of the continuing fight for liberation by GLBT citizens is so firmly planted in our culture that immigration groups can use this American struggle as an inspiration that embodies the best and highest values of our society.

To me, that is a win.

From the Dream Act Portal:

March 15 marks the beginning of the United We Dream Network’s “National Coming Out of the Shadows Week.” This campaign draws inspiration from the struggle for equal rights by the gay and lesbian community. On the homepage of dreamactivist.org, the online hub for the United we Dream Network, the following quote from famed activist Harvey Milk is prominently displayed to encourage undocumented students to disclosure their status to advocate for equal rights and the passage of the Dream Act:

Brothers and Sisters, you must come out! come out to your parents, come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends, come out to your neighbors, come out to your fellow workers. Once and for all, let’s break down the myth and destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake, for their sake. For the sake of all the youngsters who’ve been scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene. On the Statue of Liberty it says “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” In the Declaration of Independence it is written, “All men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.” For Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Bryant and all the bigots out there, no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the Declaration of Independence! No matter how hard you try you can never chip those words from the base of the Statue of Liberty! That is where America is!

Approximately 3.2 million undocumented immigrant children and young adults live in the shadows. It has been almost ten years since Congress promised them the American Dream. The wait has become increasingly insufferable.

So we lost, didn’t we.

Sure, there’s no HCR bill signed yet, but we know the game has been fixed and we’ve been sucker punched.

Bad enough to get screwed by the Republicans for so many years.  It’s irritating, very irritating to get screwed by who we thought were our fellow Democrats.

So this is being a US citizen in the year Twenty-Ten.

Huh.

Even trying to be informed seems an impossible task, much less changing everything.

And to make it even more surreal, the very institutions, the members of which are riding a  high tide of obscene wealth and power, are also crumbling as I type this.

It’s chaotic!

So I look at these kids, these four kids who have wallked what they call the “Trail of Dreams.”

These are four undocumented kids who are demonstrating how they are coming out of the shadows (you know, those shadows that 12 million of our brothers and sisters live in, over 2 million of them children).

These are their names and a little P.R. information about them for the Trail of Dreams website.  First a joint statement by the four:

We are four students from Florida – Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, Carlos Roa, and Juan Rodriguez – who were brought to the United States by our families when we were young. This is the only country we have known as home. We have the same hopes and dreams as other young people, and have worked hard to excel in school and contribute to our communities. But because of our immigration status, we’ve spent our childhoods in fear and hiding, unable to achieve our full potential. We walk in order to share our stories and to call on our leaders to fix the system that forces people like us into the shadows, stripping us of the opportunity to participate meaningfully in society.

19 year-old Herta Lluso is going to be deported from the US on August 19.  Unless, of course, we can get ICE officials to grant her a stay of deportation.  That’s where you come in.

Herta’s case is a strong example of just why we need the Dream Act:

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (The “DREAM Act”) is a piece of proposed federal legislation that was introduced in the US Senate, and the US House of Representatives on March 26, 2009. This bill would provide certain illegal immigrant students who graduate from US high schools, are of good moral character, arrived in the US as children, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency. The students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have “acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor’s degree or higher degree in the United States,” or have “served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge.” “Any alien whose permanent resident status is terminated [according to the terms of the Act] shall return to the immigration status the alien had immediately prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status under this Act.”

Wiki.

Passage of the Dream Act, however, won’t solve Herta Lluso’s deportation, because she’ll be gone, deported to Albania, long before it passes unless we get a stay of her deportation.  What we need to do is get a stay of her deportation.  And we need it now.

I found Herta’s story at dreamactivist.org:

My name is Herta Llusho, I am 19 years old, and I writing this because I am about to be deported.  I was born in Albania and was brought to the United States when I was 11 years old.   With the help and support of my family, I have struggled through more than seven years of legal proceedings to find a way to stay in this country legally.  Despite our best efforts, on August 19, I will be removed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the only place I know as my home.  I will be sent back to a country that has become a foreign place to me.  I don’t even speak Albanian well anymore.  My only hope of staying here is for as many people as possible to ask DHS to delay my deportation until the DREAM Act is passed.

My parents brought me to the United States because they believed in the promises this country had to offer. To them it was the land of opportunities, values, and ideals. They were faithful believers of the American Dream, meaning that through hard work, education, and good character their children could accomplish anything they wanted. In fact, they believed in it so strongly that they sacrificed their own lives, as well as their relationship to make it happen. My dad stayed in Albania with the hope of relocating to the US, while my mom left everything behind in pursuit of a better life for her children. To this day, even after many years of struggle and sacrifice, they still believe that it is all worth it, and so do I. I have been truly blessed in the many opportunities I have received. The United States has made me the person I am today. I would like nothing more than to contribute to the country that has given me so much.

You can read her entire story at Citizen Orange.  And you can listen to her tell it here (audio is not great, so turn it up):

There’s not a lot more to say about why Herta should be kept in this Country.  It’s obvious. She is the kind of person we want in this Country.  It is our loss to deport her.

Let’s stop this deportation. Suggested action steps are here.  Please do what you can.

——————

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Sometime in the next few weeks the Senate will once again take up legislation regarding immigration reform. This time it will be the DREAM Act sponsored by Sen.Dick Durbin(D-Il). The legislation would allow hundreds of thousands of students who were brought here as children by their undocumented parents to go on and complete their education and eventually earn the right to become legal residents and citizens.

This piece of legislation is so important right now because the right-wing, flush from their victory in stalling any form of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, have decided to make defeating the DREAM Act their top priority. They feel that they are in a position now where they do not need to give an inch on any reforms, and would view the passage of DREAM as a major defeat.

Unfortunately it is the lives of hundreds of thousands of kids that are being effected by this Washington gamesmanship. With that in mind, I’m more than willing to risk the appearance of monotony, and discuss another group of young people who anxiously await the passage of DREAM …those who have already graduated from college …because their futures depend on it now.

Each year approximately 2.8 million students graduate from US High Schools. Some will go on to college, join the military, or take other paths in life, hopefully all becoming productive members of society. But for approximately 65,000 of them, these opportunities will never be available. Not because they lack motivation, or achievement, but because of the undocumented status passed on to them by their parents.

Lacking legal status and social security numbers, these students, raised and schooled in the US, cannot apply to college, get jobs other than those at the bottom of the economic ladder, or otherwise follow their dreams. They grew up on American soil, worked hard and succeeded in spite of all odds, and want nothing more than to be recognized as individuals and not just the holders of a status they had no part in acquiring.

In Washington, politicians have debated the fate of these kids for more than seven years, holding lives and futures in their hands while vying for political advantage. But lost in the debate are the voices of the children – voices that should be heard.