Advancement Project

December 20, 2011

Dreams for 2012

Recently, 450 or so young adults, most of whom are undocumented, gathered in Dallas, Texas for the third annual United We Dream conference. T-shirts designed for the event read “Dream Nation: 10 years in the struggle.” Since 2001, each year the U.S. Congress has considered but failed to pass the DREAM Act (which stands for “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors”). The DREAM Act would give certain immigrant students who have grown up in the U.S. the chance to obtain legal status. According to the National Immigration Law Center, the most recent version of the legislation would allow students who came to the U.S. at age 15 or younger, who have been here for at least 5 years, and who have maintained “good moral character” to apply for temporary legal status, and to eventually obtain permanent legal status and become eligible for U.S. citizenship.

The DREAM Act would first permit these students to 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. It would then permit this conditional status to become permanent for students who graduated from a two-year college or certain vocational colleges, studied for at least two years toward a B.A. or higher degree, or served in the U.S. armed forces for at least two years. (The military service provision was added in 2003 in a successful attempt to garner greater support—more Republican members of Congress and unusual allies like the Pentagon have since backed the DREAM Act. Others are critical of the armed forces option, saying it is a de facto military draft because many immigrant families are too poor to pay for college.)

The Immigration Policy Center estimates that there are 2.1 million undocumented children and young adults in the country who might be eligible for legal status under the DREAM Act. The estimated total taxable earnings of DREAM Act beneficiaries over the course of their working lives is between $1.4 trillion and $3.6 trillion, according to a 2010 study by the UCLA North American Integration and Development Center.

The DREAM Act came closest to passing Congress in 2010. It passed the House but failed in the Senate, where the bill came up five votes short of the 60 needed to end the Republican filibuster and move to a vote. In 2011, support for the DREAM Act took a hit when some Republicans who had previously supported the bill, including Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona, John Cornyn of Texas, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, withheld their votes.

The DREAM Act’s most recent fate is a sign of the times. Decision makers, from those in the White House to Congress and state legislatures, have prioritized the criminalization, detention, and deportation of immigrants, and have failed to move sensible immigration reform that would give contributing members of our society the opportunity to become citizens. The fervor behind these punitive immigration policies is frightening, and their impact is devastating. In October of this year, the Obama Administration hit the historic marker of deporting 1 million immigrants since taking office—close to 400,000 immigrants a year. According to federal data acquired by the Applied Research Center (ARC), a growing number of those deported are parents: In the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children. ARC’s new report,”Shattered Families,” estimates that there are more than 5,000 children currently living in foster care in the U.S. whose parents have been either detained or deported.

While immigration policy is technically a federal issue, several states have boldly—and according to some courts and the Department of Justice, unconstitutionally—passed their own laws to criminalize immigrants. Arizona last year passed what has been dubbed the “show me your papers” law, because it gave police officers the authority to question people they suspect do not have legal status to be in the U.S. After Arizona, in the first half of 2011 state legislators in 50 states and Puerto Rico considered 1,592 immigration-related bills and resolutions, and passed 257, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Broader-sweeping anti-immigrant laws, i.e. Arizona “copycat” laws, passed this year in Georgia, Indiana, Utah, South Carolina, and most recently, Alabama. Alabama thus far has the harshest and most far reaching law—in addition to bestowing the power to law enforcement to act as immigration agents, Alabama’s law also requires that K-12 schools track the immigration status of students, and renders unenforceable any business contract, such as a lease for an apartment or an agreement for water services, made with an undocumented person. The school tracking provision of the Alabama law, and some other provisions in Alabama’s and other states’ laws, have been, for now, blocked by the courts. Other parts, such as giving the police in Alabama the right to act as immigration agents and the business contract provision, have been allowed to go into effect. On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the arguments against Arizona’s anti-immigrant law.

At the United We Dream conference, the opening session was about to begin. There was palpable excitement and a feeling of power in the air, which was surprising in the context of record-breaking deportations, the passage of draconian anti-immigrant state laws, and an uncertain future for the DREAM Act and other affirmative immigration reform. This energy in the face of darkness was, I would soon learn, indicative of the spirit of the dreamers’ movement.

The young adult participants introduced each other during the opening night and throughout the conference by saying, “I’m a dreamer, are you?” The salutation and question were both political acts. The first part states that I am undocumented and unafraid to say so; the second part seeks to build a movement. A “dreamer” is someone who would qualify for legal status if the DREAM Act passes, but in the meantime is not able to legally work, drive, or vote—despite being as American as any other high-school or college-aged person you would meet. A common experience amongst dreamers is that they do not even know they are undocumented until their junior or senior year of high school, when they are shut out of rites of passage such as voting, driving, and going to college. Another common experience is growing up in mixed-status households, which means that dreamers have watched their siblings who were born in the U.S. have access to opportunities out of undocumented students’ reach.

Many dreamers at the United We Dream conference came to this country when they were four or five years old, or younger. They are from all over the world—two dreamers from South Asia came up to me after my presentation, excited to see a South Asian American lawyer, as they put it, “represent.” One of the dreamers who spoke in the opening session came from Brazil to the U.S. when he was fourteen. He felt that he belonged in his U.S. home city, Miami, until Arizona passed its anti-immigrant law and Florida tried to pass a copycat law. He said that being made to feel that he did not belong in the U.S. felt like losing an arm. However, while it was a terrible assault, it did not shake his belief that he did in fact belong here. This conviction led him to become a full-time organizer for the DREAM Act and other immigrant rights issues.

A confidence in belonging was characteristic of the dreamers I met throughout the conference. This self-assurance is at least partly fueling the inspirational courage to speak out for immigration reform and against anti-immigrant measures. Last month, a group of young adults from “Undocumented Unafraid United” participated in civil disobedience in front of Alabama’s state capitol building. They publicly declared they were undocumented, challenging law enforcement to exercise their power under Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law. More than a dozen dreamers were arrested, but ultimately released without being picked up by immigration authorities.

The dreamers have ignited the immigrant rights movement with acts of civil disobedience across the country. In Dallas, the opening session was followed the next morning by a rally on the grounds of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. Dreamers brazenly wore shirts that read “I am undocumented” and “Got papers?” They chanted education not deportation as some wore their high school cap and gown. After the rally and back in the conference space, we met the dreamers who will be walking from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. starting January 3. Their effort, called the Campaign for an American Dream, will involve walking 3000 miles through 13 states to tell their stories, build support for the DREAM Act, and stop deportations. One of the dreamers said it was to “show the common humanity we share in every town.”

An objective of the United We Dream conference was to leave Dallas with a shared commitment to a particular campaign or campaigns for 2012. One of the first exchanges during this discussion further revealed the character of the young adults in the room. The question was: If they are fighting for the passage of the DREAM Act, after this goal is realized what will they do for their families and others who would not benefit and still would be living in the shadows? The answer from one of the young leaders was that they are fighting for values not just legislation, that the dreamers are growing as leaders in the immigrant rights movement, and that they would naturally be leading the fight, well after the DREAM Act is passed, for the civil and human rights of all immigrants in the U.S.

The young adults who are courageously fighting for the DREAM Act are making clear that the U.S. is on the wrong course when it comes to immigration policy. Poll results released earlier this month show that a majority of Americans across the political, racial, ethnic, gender, and age spectrum—including Republicans—believe that immigrants who have been in this country should be able to stay. Nonetheless, the DREAM Act and other affirmative immigration reform may be stymied again in 2012, this time by presidential election politics. The movement, however, most certainly will continue to grow.