Does America Need A DREAM Act?

Lady Liberty

What is this land America, so many travel there.
I'm going now while I'm still young, my darling meet me there.
Wish me luck my lovely, I'll send for you when I can;
And we'll make our home in the American land

American Land, Verse 1 by Bruce Springsteen

DREAM Act = Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act

If the DREAM Act has a poster child, Staff Sergeant Luis Lopez is probably it. The Wall Street Journal published his story in February 2011. In brief, his parents brought him to the U.S. as an eight year old in 1990. They overstayed their tourist visa. He grew up in Los Angeles. After high school he used fake documents to enlist in the U.S. Army, eventually serving ten years, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. By all accounts he was a brave and competent soldier. In December 2010 Sergeant Lopez told his army superiors that he was an illegal alien and was applying for U.S. citizenship. When an army official referenced his fake enlistment documents as evidence that he had not served honorably, it put his citizenship application in jeopardy.  Fortunately for Sergeant Lopez, his commanding officer went to bat for him, and he was eventually granted citizenship.


Sergeant Luis Lopez

Sergeant Lopez’s story is far from unique. Out of an illegal immigrant population of 11 million, there are about 765,000 who came to the U.S. before the age of sixteen and effectively grew up “American.” Approximately 65,000 young adults in this category graduate from high school each year. They inhabit a kind of legal-cultural limbo: they identify as American, yet they cannot legally work in the U.S. Furthermore, current immigration policy makes it almost impossible for them to ever live and work legally in the U.S.


[Note: Posted population estimates for illegal immigrants vary considerably, so these statistics are a bit fuzzy, but adequate for this discussion]


It was to help people like Sergeant Lopez that the DREAM Act was first proposed in 2001. It provides a path to U.S. citizenship for this subgroup of illegal immigrants. There are conditions. They must have entered the U.S. before age sixteen, lived continuously in the U.S. for five years, graduate from high school, possess good moral character, and either serve in the military or attend a four-year college for two years. Do all this and they earn six years of conditional legal residency; successfully complete their degree program or military service, and they may apply for permanent legal status. Bottom line: the DREAM Act is not an easy road to citizenship.


The original DREAM Act did not pass in 2001. An amended version passed the House during the lame duck session of Congress in 2010, however, it could not muster sixty Senate votes necessary to overcome a filibuster. While the bill’s sponsors tried to narrow the scope of the DREAM Act, and so keep it apart from the larger questions regarding immigration and border policy, it seems the two cannot be easily separated.


Polling data suggests the country is split on immigration policy. According to Pew Research Center, 29% of Americans think the highest priority is better border security, 24% think it is a path to citizenship, and 48% think border security and a path to citizenship are equal priorities. 

 

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona),
former presidential candidate
 and well-known maverick


Originally the DREAM Act had sponsors on both sides of the political aisle. Today support for the act closely follows party line, with Republicans, especially those associated with the Tea Party, opposing the act, and Democrats supporting it. It is noteworthy that such Republican stalwarts as Senators McCain (R-AZ), Kyl (R-AZ), and Graham (R-SC) recently changed their position on the DREAM Act, most likely in response to pressure from the Tea Party wing. John McCain had co-sponsored the DREAM Act in 2007.

Fundamentally the DREAM Act is about American values. It forces us to ask What do we think about immigrants? and Do illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as children merit special consideration for citizenship?

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama),
leading opponent of the DREAM Act

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) lead the Senate opposition against the DREAM Act, declaiming in late 2010, “This bill is a law that at its fundamental core is a reward for illegal activity.” It is noteworthy that Session’s home state, Alabama, recently passed the most draconian anti-immigrant legislation. Prior to the last vote on the DREAM Act, he circulated a memo outlining reasons to oppose the act. He argued that the act would encourage more illegal immigration, lead to mass chain immigration, and saddle taxpayers with more federal debt. In his worldview illegal immigrants enter the U.S. to pursue criminal activity, such as running guns or drugs, and to suck on the public teat. Session’s unspoken goal, and the goal of the recent Alabama legislation, is to create conditions so noxious and restrictive that illegal immigrants will self deport, a term that recently surfaced in Mitt Romney's  presidential primary campaign.

Missing entirely from Senator Session’s calculus is the long term economic value of immigrants and the moral question posed by people like Sergeant Lopez. The famous line inscribed on the Statue of Liberty,

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…,”

The 1920's revival of the KKK
migrated north and introduced
the quaint tradition of crossburning

carries no significance or weight. And whether a child raised in the U.S. has the language skills, cultural understanding, and social network to survive in his/her country of origin is a question apparently not worthy of consideration. Context is important, so it should not be forgotten that the drug war in Mexico has claimed more than 50,000 lives, and being deported to that country is not like being deported to Sweden.

For the student of history the current anti-immigration fever is reminiscent of the nativist movement of the early 20^th century, which culminated in the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. It capped immigration of what many Americans then thought of as less-than-desirable Catholics and Jews from eastern and southern Europe. It was closely associated with the 1920s revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

I docked at Ellis Island in the city of light and spire.
I wandered to the valley of red-hot steel and fire.
We made the steel that built the cities with the sweat of our two hands.
We made our home in the American land.

American Land, Verse 4 by Bruce Springsteen

President Ronald Reagan believed
immigrants represent an essential
American value

What is perhaps most ironic in all this is that a political generation ago President Reagan, the conservative’s conservative, championed a path to citizenship through the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.  Speaking in a 1984 debate, President Reagan said “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.” He appreciated that people who immigrate to the U.S. overwhelmingly seek personal liberty and economic opportunity. He understood that the passion and energy of new immigrants helps grow the economy. He also saw the large illegal immigrant population as rife for exploitation, which greatly troubled him.



Many of those who knew and worked with Reagan have expressed their belief that Reagan would strongly endorse today’s DREAM Act. For him it would embody the American values represented by the Statue of Liberty. It would provide the most worthy subgroup of illegal immigrants with an opportunity to share the American dream. It would chip away at the population of easily exploited illegal immigrants. Finally, he would see the future contributions of DREAM Act children as both strengthening our economy and reinforcing traditional American values.

So, yes America, we need a DREAM Act.

The McNicholas, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis too*,
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews,
They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below.

They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin;
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind; They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're still dying now;
Their hands that built the country we're always trying to keep out.

American Land, Verses 4 and 5 by Bruce Springsteen


* Bruce Springsteen's mother's maiden name was Zerilli.


Here's Springsteen and the E Street Band playing a footstomping, kickass rendition of American Land.