Furthermore! – We can still DREAM
Curse you, United States Senate!
I was all ready with my Furthermore! theme today:
The Senate … where DREAMs go to die. The Senate killed the DREAM Act and with it the dreams of young people who came to America as small children “illegally”.
Ha. Wasn’t that clever? Wouldn’t I have won a Pulitzer Prize for that?
But then the United States Senate did something completely unexpected. They passed some important last minute legislation and then, 
, laid out a plan for modifying Senate rules for the 112th Congress … that all 53 returning Democratic Senators are supporting!
As Gail Collins (someone who really does deserve a Pulitzer) said yesterday: “Good work, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Unlike your hapless predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you’ve had legislation shooting off to the White House like angry birds in that video game. Unemployment compensation! Gay rights! Food safety! Judicial appointments! Arms control! Health care for 9/11 responders!”
So instead of where DREAMs go to die, maybe now it was where DREAMs go to get a some attention … enough to continue DREAMing?
The DREAM Act (The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) is the legislation passed by the House of Representatives which would “provide certain illegal and deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. illegally as minors, and have been in the country continuously and illegally for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years at a four year institution of higher learning.”
Essentially it would stop punishing young people who came to America as small children when their parents illegally crossed the border. And give those innocent children a chance to become American citizens.
All that attention on the DREAM Act in the flurry of quacktivity in the lame duck session, has resulted in a new push to get a grass roots movement together to enact it next year:
The White House is preparing a major grassroots push to pass the DREAM Act next year, which President Obama said Wednesday was one of his top priorities after the legislation failed in the recent lame duck session.
On a conference call with journalists Wednesday, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the President is willing to “wage a very public campaign” to push the DREAM Act, which would grant undocumented students who were brought into the United States as minors by their parents a path to citizenship through higher education or military service. He added that grassroots activism will be essential to success.
“The President always said on the campaign trail that change comes from the bottom up, and on issues like the DREAM Act, it has to, because there’s some real resistance in Washington — primarily in the other party, but some in our own — and I think we’re going to need to get people activated, and I think you’ll see a lot of that over the next months and years,” said Pfeiffer in response to a question from The Huffington Post.
During a news conference Wednesday, Obama said he will be reaching out to Republicans who may believe “in their heart of hearts” that passing the DREAM Act is the right thing to do but think the politics are tough.
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And President Obama may very well be correct. You do not have to go too far back in the way-back machine to find a bipartisan flavor to the push for the DREAM Act:
Back in 2003, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sponsored S.1545 — the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Back then, the bill attracted co-sponsors like Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John McCain (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Sam Brownback (R-KS). All of those Republican senators voted against a more conservative version of the same bill this past Saturday. Hatch simply didn’t bother to show up.
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That failure to get cloture (it failed when 5 Democrats joined a Republican filibuster — minus 3 reasonable Republicans) got a lot of positive attention for those who voted for it and a lot of negative attention for those who voted against it.
The bill will have to start all over again in the 112th Congress and a grassroots effort will be needed to keep this dream alive.
It should be a no-brainer.
The current tea party Republicans and Blue Dogs are focused on “offsets”. The CBO has estimated that this piece of legislation would generate an estimated $1.4 billion in tax revenues.
The only thing we give these kids is citizenship. And giving that costs us nothing. In fact, when we give someone citizenship we immediately enhance our country because we have included another person in the American experience. Not just any person but one who may very well carry the American dream more deeply than someone else. Their parents came to this country in search of a better life for themselves and their children. And that is exactly the attitude we should encourage.
The way I see it, citizenship is one of those things that is more valuable to us when we give it away. Let’s join this new grassroots movement and work to give it to these kids.
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This really is a no brainer although I hesitate to use that term when suggesting that something should be passed by Congress.
Lately the things I have seen on the news suggests that “no-brainer” might be a good name for the incoming House of Representatives.
I agree this is a no brainer. Kids who have grown up in this country should not be punished for their parents’ misdeeds. This is something that has always troubled me deeply, and yes, we need to push this through. As this month has shown, we can do the apparently impossible with the will of good people.
Let’s make sure the next Congress hears that we want them to be good people.
Great Furthermore!, Jan.
I had trouble with the words, winterbanyan, because in my mind it is hard to equate “misdeeds” or “crimes” with “Their parents came to this country in search of a better life for themselves and their children”. People should be able to make those kind of choices and the political borders created by modern society can never be made tall enough to keep out people trying to make their own lives better.
I am pretty sure that my French Canadian ancestors came into America illegally. They did jobs that others did not want to do, spoke a language other than English, they had a different religion (Catholic) than the majority and were looked down upon. They were no different than the people sneaking across the border from the south except for one thing: the color of their skin. For some reason that seems to make it “okay” to discriminate.
I used the word misdeed because it’s every so much less grievous than “crime.” My ancestors for the most part never had to pass immigration control. Some of them may have spent some time in holding centers until it was certain they didn’t have TB (I don’t know) but I’m pretty sure most of them just arrived with whatever they could carry, including my great grandmother with her 12 kids who moved to Detroit from Ontario in 1904. She just packed up and took a ferry.
Nobody questioned her right, or the right of her children to be considered citizens. I’m sure some paperwork got done at some point, but as far as I’ve been able to tell from family stories, there was no hassle at all.
So, um, why are we getting so nasty?
I agree and “misdeed” is certainly better than “crime”. I hesitated to use even “illegal” because the laws being broken seem to deny the human condition. Instead I chose “illegally crossed the border”.
I think this depends on whether one holds a worldview of fear and scarcity (The Republican view of hoarding and ‘not enough’) or the more progressive worldview of hope and plenty so nicely summed up in:
Why did the Republicans who originally sponsored this change their minds? Fear. They are buying into the narrative of fear currently being served by the Tea Party/Republican Party.
They are afraid they won’t win reelection. I think we should ask them, “Really, what are you afraid of?”
This is a perfect issue for us, the progressives, to stand on morals and values. We can start by reminding folks how many Americans have branches on their family tree whose roots grew on another continent. We are a nation of immigrants; built by immigrants, defended by immigrants, sustained by immigrants. We are all immigrants- some of us are just newer than others of us.
I like the title Jan, “We can still DREAM”
You are right, addisnana. The is a perfect issue for progressives and one where we can talk about our values. Real Americans do not deny opportunity to others, especially children.
The great thing about this issue is that it is one that President Obama intends to work for so we are in pretty good company.
Whether or not we can convince a majority of Congress to set aside their partisanship for another try at this is another question. I am willing to try.
Thanks Jan
Thanks for this, Jan. I agree that the DREAM Act should be a no-brainer. No matter one’s opinion on how undocumented parents came to the U.S., their children should not be punished for it. The opposition is based on racism, plainly and simply. If most of those children were white Europeans, there would be no opposition to making them citizens.
I never expected to look forward eagerly to the opening of a new Senate session, but this January could be very interesting. With 53 Democratic Senators signed on to revise the filibuster rules, and at least two good proposed reforms being bandied about, we might finally see an end to Rule By Obstruction.