Thread: Students fasting for green card provision-DREAM ACT

Students fasting for green card provision
DREAM Act would grant legal status for college, military

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, July 5, 2007


Miriam, a UC Davis junior, intended to major in international relations, but when she learned that foreign travel was required for the degree, she abandoned her plans because she won't risk leaving the country. Miriam, who is 20 and has lived in California since she was 7, withheld her last name because she's an illegal immigrant and fears deportation.

She watched her prospects for becoming a legal resident crumble last week with the collapse of the Senate's contentious comprehensive immigration reform bill. But she and other undocumented California students are hoping to persuade policymakers to pull one piece of legislation out of the rubble and dust it off: the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the DREAM Act.

The bill, first introduced in 2001, would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who entered the country before they turned 16, have lived here at least five years, have no criminal record and have graduated from high school or been admitted to college. The students would be granted a six-year provisional legal status during which they must attend college or serve in the military for at least two years before they could receive a green card.

An estimated 65,000 illegal immigrant students graduate from high school every year and would benefit from such a bill. At present, they are unable to work legally and, in many states, can't enroll in college.

"The DREAM Act would give me a sense that I was valued as a person," said Miriam, who is one of seven students holding a weeklong fast in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza in a push for passage of the bill. In San Jose, students are fasting outside the district office of Rep. Zoe Lofgren. "I was raised here; I went to school here; I see my future here. ... Let us be part of this society, let us do it the right way."

The college students will be joined today by two dozen other fasting students who have come by caravan from Southern California, stopping along the way to lobby members of Congress in Santa Ana, Pasadena, Bakersfield and San Jose. They plan a rally outside Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office and a march to the Civic Center.

Perhaps the least controversial part of the larger immigration package because it deals with children who did not knowingly break American immigration laws, the DREAM Act was stymied repeatedly by the acrimonious battle over the larger bill.

"This is a very bipartisan proposal," said Melissa LazarÃ*n, associate director for education policy at the National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C., which supports the measure. "It has a great deal of consensus. It was included in the base bill both this Congress and last Congress, so we have every reason to believe this is something we can all agree on."

But Lofgren, a San Jose Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee and is a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, was more circumspect. She is assessing the political viability of resuscitating individual portions of immigration reform.

"The question is whether Congress is capable of moving anything else, and I don't know the answer to that yet," she said. "We should assume nothing."

Feinstein is another DREAM Act supporter, but she said she will make her first priority the AgJOBS bill, which would offer legal residence to 500,000 illegal immigrant farm workers on the condition that they continue to work in agriculture for several years.

Meanwhile, Americans who oppose expanding immigration or offering legal status to any illegal immigrants, hope to use the defeat of the immigration bill to shore up border security and immigration enforcement.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that favors tighter immigration restrictions, has proposed an array of measures that don't require new legislation, including constructing 700 miles of already-approved border fence, allowing local police to enforce federal immigration laws and increasing the pace of deportations of some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Rep. Brian Bilbray, a San Diego County Republican who chairs the House immigration caucus, wants to see a tougher crackdown on illegal immigrants and employers who hire them.

"We've got to stop sending mixed messages," he said. "The DREAM Act is a nightmare when it comes down to the rule of law and the inherent unfairness of punishing people who play by the rules and rewarding those who break the law."

But students like Rodrigo, another participant in the San Francisco fast, say it's their only hope for building a meaningful future.

Rodrigo, a UC Berkeley sophomore who also declined to give his last name because he is undocumented, said he barely remembers the village in southern Mexico that he left as a 6-year-old after the death of his father, a peasant farmer.

"I can't go back; I don't know anything about Mexico," said Rodrigo, 19, who speaks flawless English and hopes one day to become a lawyer. "The DREAM Act will benefit students like me who are ready to go to college, ready to help their community and invest in the economy."

Rodrigo and Miriam have benefited from a 2002 California law that allows students who spend at least three years in high school here to qualify for in-state tuition rates at a public university, even if they lack legal status. The students do not, however, qualify for state or federal financial aid.

Rodrigo, who graduated as valedictorian from his San Jose high school, works 30 to 40 hours a week on top of his course load to pay for tuition, room and board. Still, last year he had to withdraw from college to earn enough money to keep studying.

Allowing young people to pursue a college education in the United States makes sense for the country, said Michael Fix, co-director of the National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

"We know there's a very high dropout rate among high school students who are undocumented, and dropping out is correlated with poor pay, worse health, every bad outcome," said Fix. "With the DREAM Act, they can get a job and be in the above-ground economy."

Though the bill has more support than any other plan to legalize undocumented immigrants, said Fix, the issue has become so polarized that "any form of legalization that gets subjected to an intense public debate is going to be really, highly controversial."

E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.

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THERE'S ALSO A POLL ON THIS PAGE; BE SURE TO VOTE!

Hey, this is good news! Now we won't have to dole out so many food stamps!

Fast away.....and then go home

How many slots for legal, US citizen students did these illegals steal??

We have to slam the "Dream Act" into the ground if/when it resurfaces!!

How infantile. Maybe next they'll hold their breath until they turn blue!

this is HILARIOUS CLINTON's baby.....it's part of the Liberal plan to open up the country, wipe out the middle class and give entitlements to all who are below the 'Rich' class. This way they can easily control the majority of the population without much resistance.

How the heck are they even getting into shcools? Fake ID's I know I had to show a DL every time I registered, took an entrance exam or paid fees!

Hope you lose lots of weight....that way we can get more of you on the deportation bus.

Originally Posted by americangirl

Hey, this is good news! Now we won't have to dole out so many food stamps!

go home and then you would not need to worry about anything. You are a citizen of your country.