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Will this worthy bill finally be passed? It's gotten close several times and this is the first time it has had a vote since the Democrats took over Congress. For those of you not familiar with the DREAM Act, it is a proposal to allow people who
- entered the US before age 16
- have been in the country at least five years
- have graduated high school
- have good moral character (including no criminal history)
to get a conditional green card that could be converted to an unconditional green card after attending college or serving in the military.
The bill will likely be considered for inclusion on the Defense Department Authorization bill being considered next week.
These young people deserve a shot at the American dream. If you want to blame their parents for breaking laws, so be it. But these are folks who cannot be accused of wantonly breaking US laws. Many came as babies and the only life they know is that of an American. I've had clients who grew up actually believing they were American only to discover the shocking truth when they tried to sign up for the military or get in state tuition for college. I had one client who came to the country at age four and only found out he was an illegal alien when he applied for a license to become a dentist!
Please take the time to contact your Senator and tell them to support the DREAM Act. You can find more information on this by going to the AILA advocacy page on this subject.
I do not think people really oppose the relief being offered. Neither do they grudge the proccess of legalization for undocumented immigrants. However there is a great deal of heartburn over the way skilled workers are treated. Why can't this bill include legal children who have lived here most of their lives? kids have to "become illegal" to get benefits? what's the message?
Similarly in CIR, 90,000 GC a year for 5 years were offered for backlog reduction. Compare this to the almost 1 million FB relief and the 11 million GCs for legalization. what's more no one knows how many undocumented workerers there are. 11 or 13 million? so 2 million extra GC are just an asteriek to congress, and yet they won't give paltry increases to skilled workers to cover the backlogs?
this is the source of frustration that's manifesting in the comments you are reading.
But on a separate note, strategically we saw what happened with CIR when we tried to get every fix on one bill. Three years of work down the drain. We need to get each fix done a little at a time and take what we can get each time and focus on getting more in the next battle. One week we have a victory for illegal immigrants. The next we win one for skilled workers. The next we help refugees and asylees. We need to cheer each victory rather than be upset that not every group was helped.
The thing is that the other side loses their bargaining chips for the Comprehensive immigration bill, which we saw fail twice in the Senate. Not would want to lose that bargaining chips....so they have to compromise, piece-meal style and not comprehensive.