The inmates are running the asylum.

The DREAM Act - legislation that would create a path to citizenship for a special category of illegal immigrants, those who were brought to the U.S. as children - won passage in the U.S. House on Wednesday but was pulled from a vote by the Senate leadership on Thursday to avoid defeat.

The bill's opponents offered many arguments against passage, but they ignored the one crucial element: These young people did not come here on their own. They followed their parents, as they had to. Then, after settling in the U.S., they followed the law.

No civilized nation criminalizes a child's innocent conduct.

And so, even though chances are slim that the bill will be reintroduced before the Senate adjourns for the year, supporters must not give up fighting for passage.

To let the DREAM Act die would have real-world consequences for thousands of struggling young people, many of them right here in New York. I say this with confidence because, as the president of a public college where many of those people go to school, I'll see the wreckage up close.

Take Natalia (I can't give her real name because that would land her in trouble), who was brought to the U.S. from Poland as a child. She taught herself English, made her way through high school and enrolled in Hunter, supporting herself by baby-sitting - the only job she could get without a Social Security number...



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