With the start of a new Congress, immigrant students and their supporters have eagerly anticipated the introduction of the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act. Finally introduced on March 1, 2007 in U.S. House of Representatives, and on March 6 in the Senate, the DREAM Act (H.R. 1275, S. 774) is an urgently needed bi-partisan federal bill that would allow undocumented immigrant students a chance at higher education, a path to citizenship, and a way to give back to their community and country.
The DREAM Act would benefit the 65,000 undocumented students who graduate from high schools in the U.S. each year and face severely limited opportunities for continuing their studies. In Florida, some 4,000 new high school graduates would qualify for DREAM benefits each year. For the past 6 years, immigrant youth and allies nationwide have been organizing for the passage of the DREAM Act. In Florida, Students Working for Equal Rights (SWER), a group of student leaders organized under the auspices of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, has been working on the issue.
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According to SWER student leaders, undocumented students in our state face many barriers to higher education; they are ineligible for state and federal financial aid and must pay higher out of state tuition rates. Says one Colombian-born Miami-Dade Honors College student active in the group, "I struggle semester after semester to gather the money for my tuition. If I were a resident, my education would have been paid for by the Honors College [scholarship]. I do not know if I will continue my studies due to my legal status and monetary problems." It is due to challenges like these that only 1 in 20 undocumented high school graduates nationwide currently attend college.
"The denial of education is nothing new in our society" says Maria, an immigrant youth leader from Students Working for Equal Rights (SWER). "Just decades ago African Americans were also denied access to a fair, appropriate education. Today in the 21 century we face a new challenge; we are denying access to education to children that without fault have no status in this country. Education is a human right. The DREAM Act, like the civil rights movement is opening doors."
The bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Howard Berman (D-CA). Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) have co-sponsored the bill. In the Senate the measure is sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin who is joined by Senate Democrats Patrick Leahy (VT), Edward Kennedy (MA), Joseph Lieberman (CT), Russ Feingold (WI), and Barack Obama (IL) and Republican Congressmen Chuck Hagel (NE), Richard Lugar (IN), John McCain (AZ), Larry Craig (ID), and Mike Crapo (ID).
