Ideas for Change: Pass the DREAM Act
Final-round voting is underway on Ideas for Change. The top ten ideas across the site will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, co-hosted by the Case Foundation. Change.org will also then announce the launch of a national advocacy campaign behind each winning idea in collaboration with our nonprofit partners to turn each idea into actual policy.
There are three ideas in the Immigration category:
- Pass the DREAM Act - Support Higher Education for All Students
- Equal Immigration Rights for Same Sex Binational Couples
- Provide relief for families of immigrants
All three are worth voting for, and since each voter has ten votes to cast, I see no reason not to vote for all three.
The leading Immigration idea has picked up some steam in the pro-migrant blogosphere and has just broken into the top 15. Read the idea and if you agree with it, vote to put it into the top 10.
Linking sites:
Migra Matters crossposted at DailyKos
The idea:
Pass the DREAM Act - Support Higher Education for All Students
The problem: Many American students graduate from college and high school each year, and face a roadblock to their dreams: they can't drive, can't work legally, can't further their education, and can't pay taxes to contribute to the economy just because they were brought to this country illegally by their parents or lost legal status along the way. It is a classic case of lost potential and broken dreams, and the permanent underclass of youth it creates is detrimental to our economy. Former Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has said: "In short, although these children have built their lives here, they have no possibility of achieving and living the American dream. What a tremendous loss for them, and what a tremendous loss to our society."
The solution: The federal DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), is a bipartisan legislation that would permit these students conditional legal status and eventual citizenship granted that they meet ALL the following requirements:
--if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16, are below the age of 30,
--have lived here continuously for five years,
--graduated from a U.S. high school or obtained a GED
--have good moral character with no criminal record and
--attend college or enlist in the military.Why should you care? There is no other pathway to citizenship for these students. Besides the injustice of punishing children for the alleged transgressions of their parents, throwing away the talent we have invested in from K-12 and accruing losses in human and financial capital by deporting talented students is bad public policy. The Social Security Administration has recently stated that we need a net increase of 100,000 immigrants each year to ensure Social Security solvency. Passing the DREAM Act would actually help solve the Social Security crisis by creating a larger taxable base of educated Americans that are already in the United States. It would also free some of the backlog that currently plagues the legal immigration system. Also, the DREAM Act in its latest form, does not grant in-state tuition to any student.
Endorsements: Since 2001, almost a 1000 organizations have officially endorsed the bill. Barack Obama has stated that DREAM Act beneficiaries are "American children for all intents and purposes" and has called this a top priority.Tell President-Elect Obama to pass the DREAM Act in 2009. See DreamActivist.org to get more involved.
COMMENTS (7)