Dreams Deferred: Criminalizing Immigrant Youth

[Editor's Note: Below is a post from change.org Immigrant Rights blogger Dave Bennion on the DREAM Act. Today on the Immigration blog, I write about the dangerous cycle created by harsh immigration policies that feed growth for private prisons. Thanks for reading.]

Missouri high school senior Noe Guzman tried to enlist in the Marines last year, only to be led away in handcuffs and shackles at the enlistment center.  "Did you really think you could get away with this?" he was asked.

The man from ICE told Noe he was an illegal alien. Noe was stunned. He knew he had been born in Mexico; he had a vague memory of moving to the States with his mother at age 4. But illegally? The man from ICE told Noe that he could deport him right then. But he didn't. Instead, he told Noe to call his mother.

She drove to St. Louis. She told Noe that yes, he was an illegal immigrant. Your father was abusive, and I needed to get us away from him, she said. She had purchased the Social Security card once they arrived in this country.

Even with his community vouching for him, Noe's future in this country remains uncertain.

Benita Veliz (left) came to the U.S. with her parents at the age of eight.  She graduated valedictorian of her high school, despite being the youngest member of her class, at the age of sixteen.  She won a full scholarship to a private university, from which she graduated at the age of twenty with a double major in Biology and Sociology.  In addition to a rigorous academic and volunteer schedule, she worked 45+ hours a week waiting tables to finance her dream of becoming a lawyer.  Unable to enroll in law school because of her immigration status but not one to mope, Benita started her own photography and design business and tutors students on the side.

Then she was pulled over and charged with a minor traffic violation, which was enough to land her in deportation proceedings.  After so many years in this country, after all she has contributed and with all her unfilled potential, there is no way under existing law for her to avoid being deported to a country she no longer knows.

That is where the DREAM Act comes in.  The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, is bipartisan bill first introduced 2001 to grant undocumented youth conditional legal status if they:

• were brought here before the age of 16
• have lived in the United States continuously for five years
• have no criminal record
• graduate from high school and complete two years of college or military service.

No one would gain immediate citizenship from the DREAM Act - eligible applicants would have to fulfill the requirements and wait six years before applying for U.S. citizenship.

Right now, our government acts as though these valedictorians, athletes, student scholars, and future leaders pose such a threat to American society that they must be arrested, imprisoned, and deported post-haste.

It's part of the process of criminalizing the immigration system that Tom Barry has characterized as another effort to "govern through crime" on the template of the failed War on Drugs:

rather than fixing a dysfunctional immigration system, government has since the mid-1990s moved to manage the immigration crisis through a strategy that stresses deterrence and forcible exclusion. The immigration system has been shifted to the criminal justice system.

This is not the way to foster a forward-looking, innovative society.  We are educating children, inculcating them with the American Dream of success based on talent and hard work, then shutting the door to opportunity in their faces.  Instead of college followed by a productive career, these students can look forward to orange jumpsuits and potentially permanent exile from the country they now call home.

This makes no sense to me.  If you agree, please ask your representatives in Congress to support the DREAM Act.  (Here are some additional ways to help.)