by Marvin J. Ramirez
Marvin J. Ramirez
When children are brought here by their parents when they are toddlers, should they be treated like-second class citizens and humiliated when they grow up while thinking they were North Americans?
How about if the baby becomes a successful student, graduates with honors from high school, but until when he or she is ready to go to college, is told that he or she can’t go on with his or her educational goal because he or she is really not a U.S. citizen?
I would die if that had been my case. Fortunately, I am a U.S. citizen and can get all the education I need or want to get.
But not those poor young men and women who all their lives believed they were from here and never questioned their human status. It must be pretty sad.
There are thousands of young Latinos who are bright and who would give the best of their talent to this “their” nation, which now has to go abroad to get smart and educated people to work here, because the U.S. does not have enough brains to move the technology and science forward as a superpower needs to.
The DREAM Act will be offered by Senator Durbin (D-IL) as an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that the Senate will consider this week.
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (called “The DREAM Act”) is a bill that has been introduced several times in the United States Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for immigrant students. The DREAM Act would also repeal Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which currently requires states to offer in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens in order to offer them to immigrant students.
The DREAM Act would provide a path to legality for persons brought illegally to the United States by their parents or guardians as children, or whose parents attempted to immigrate legally but were then denied legality after several years in application, and whose children thus derived their legal status solely from their parents (the child also becoming illegal upon the parent’s denial).
To qualify, the immigrant student would have to meet certain requirements such as:
- Proof of having arrived in the United States at age 15 or younger.
- Proof of residence in the United States for a least five (5) consecutive years since their date of arrival.
- Having graduated from an American High School, or obtained a GED.
- “Good moral character,” essentially defi ned as the absence of a signifi cant criminal record (or any drug charges whatsoever).
Dear members of Congress, Senators, besides of being a justice serving law, the DREAM ACT will provide in-house brains for our country. All these young men and women want is to be allowed to study for the benefit of all of us. They didn’t cross the border illegally by choice. Forgive them and forgive yourselves, those who oppose it, for you are evil people and anti Americans.
