DREAM Act could be voted on next week
by Gustavo Martínez on Sep 17 2010
Organizers in support of the DREAM Act are calling senators to help get the 60 votes needed to pass the much-anticipated federal bill. After reaching the 10,000 phone-call mark on Thursday, activists now hope to make 5,000 more before the vote.
Just this week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) announced that he would attach the bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Another rider on the bill would begin a gradual repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy within the military.
At the press conference, Reid said:
I think it’s really important that we move forward in this legislation, I tried to work on — I know we can’t do comprehensive immigration reform — I’ve tried to. I’ve tried so very very hard. I tried different iterations of this, but those Republicans we had in the last Congress have left us.
The DREAM Act is really important. [...] That’s what the DREAM Act is all about: kids who grew up as Americans should be able to get their green cards after they go to college or serve in the military. So these are the two amendments ["don't ask don't tell" and DREAM Act] that I’ve told Senator McConnell that I think are essential to the defense authorization bill. I hope they let us move to it.
A message on DREAMActivist.org provides the phone numbers and names of the senators the group identified as important to contact.
A vote is expected next Tuesday. Senator John McCain, who previously cosponsored DREAM Act legislation, said he would block the bill. President Obama has pledged his support for the DREAM Act. Obama noted that several Republicans who previously supported the DREAM Act have "backed away from that vote." Republicans argue that including the DREAM Act on a defense appropriations bill needlessly politicizes it. As midterm elections near, activists may have the leverage needed to pass a bill that has previously stalled in Congress.
Comments (5)
Submitted by Maria (not verified) on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 15:02.
To help us, please call: 1-888-254-5087 and ask to be connected to the following Senators (one for each call, of course).
Sen. Snowe from Maine
Sen. LeMieux from Florida
Sen. Hatch from Utah
Sen. McCain from Arizona
Sen. Hutchinson from Texas
We need these senators to support the DREAM Act! Let them know you want them to vote YES on the DREAM Act next week! Your calls truly make a difference in the lives of undocumented students. And as an undocumented student, myself, I'm urging you to call. Please, my future depends on it.
Thank you!
Maria
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 15:48.
Even If You Favor Amnesty For Some Illegal Teens, This DREAM Act Must Be Stopped
Those of us who are being taxed to pay for all the illegal aliens, who have managed to steal into this country need to read this summary of politicians who have adopted--forcing through any kind of Path to Citizenship. If you think it's not going to cost any money to process President Obama's Immigration Reform package--think again. To process the millions already here, the dollar figures will be in the billions? The government will certainly retain immigration attorneys to aid in this monolithic action, which will undoubtedly end up with massive fraud--as it is now with the six stealth amnesties already passed, without public notice. The DREAM ACT BILL, is a last ditch effort by pro-amnesty incumbent Senator Harry Reid to save his job.
It seems that Obama and his Senate are trying to pass any form of Amesty--by any means, when 15 million US workers are slogging the streets, looking for work. More than half of Nevadans think undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from Nevada citizens, a recent Las Vegas Review-Journal poll showed. Angle's ad blasts Reid for voting to give "special tax breaks to illegal aliens" and to give those Social Security benefits "even for the time they were here in public welfare benefits? It was $62 million dollars in just July for Los Angeles County, California.
With 15 million Americans OUT-OF-WORK--forcing Amnesty into the people's faces is political suicide. If this bill is passed it leaves intact the “chain migration system” that will permit these 2.1 million illegal aliens, to eventually send for millions more relatives. The ominous DREAM ACT leaves intact the chain migration system that will allow these 2.1 million illegal aliens to ultimately send for millions more relatives.
Because of this emergency in warning patriotic Americans this is the statement of Roy Beck, President of Numbersusa pro-sovereignty organization. In his words it outlines the invisible dangers of this obvious deceptive attachment to the De fence appropriations bill--NEXT WEEK.
If a mass amnesty is passed by the Democrats, how are they going to pay for the 18 million people to be processed --TAXPAYERS? How are they going to enforce the rush by millions for the border, or a one-way-plane-ticket, aware that this Amnesty is going to be signed--or the next million or those who come after?
Vent your anger on the phone lines to Washington and your Senator and Congressman at 202-224-3121.
ABC quoted me as saying that there is no question that many of the teenagers who would get an amnesty through the DREAM Act make for "compelling" cases. But I'm also quoted saying that this DREAM amnesty should not be passed.
If the DREAM Act were actually limited to the PR rhetoric that comes out of the pro-amnesty organizations, there might be reason for a debate.
If you barely paid attention, you would think this amnesty is just about illegal aliens who are high school valedictorians.
If you pay a little more attention you would know it is larger than that but think it is for good students who are teenagers or college students who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were toddlers. You would think that they don't know the language of their home country, have no ties there and if not given a U.S. amnesty would be without a country.
And you might have believed all the rhetoric of the pro-amnesty forces of the last year that they only want legalization (amnesty) for illegal aliens if it is coupled with strong enforcement measures that will prevent a buildup of an illegal population in the future.
Well, the open-borders people have spent millions of dollars on PR firms to figure out how to lie to and mislead the American people in the smoothest way possible -- how to seem to be saying things that they actually aren't.
Here's the real story:
No. 1: Not valedictorians -- or even necessarily good students.
Any illegal alien who can manage to meet the minimum requirements to graduate from high school or get an equivalent degree meets the first test.
No. 2: Primarily NOT teens or college students.
The Senate DREAM bill allows you to be up to 35 years old!
The House bill has no upper limit.
No. 3: Don't have to have come when a child.
An illegal alien can get this amnesty even if he didn't arrive in the U.S. until age 15. That's right -- he can spend his first 15 years learning the language and culture of his home country and developing all kinds of ties there and then come to the U.S. and later claim need for a DREAM amnesty because he supposedly has no country to go back to.
I was on a national Hispanic cable TV show last week on which a videotaped profile was run of a well-heeled-looking woman from another country bragging in front of New York City scenery that a few years ago she had illegally overstayed her tourist visa when her son was 15 so he could go to a U.S. college and pursue a U.S. career. DREAM would reward her and all the rest of people in the world who might think like her.
No. 4: Bill is open to gigantic fraud.
The bill is written so that the 2, 3 or 4 million illegal-alien applicants only have to CLAIM to meet the criteria. They don't have to PROVE anything.
The government has to build a case, one illegal at a time, and prove the claims on the application are false in order for the illegal alien to lose the amnesty. Can you imagine how many times that is likely to happen?
No. 5: DREAM does nothing to stop the behavior that put teenagers into their situation. It leaves the jobs magnet in place.
This amnesty has no enforcement measures at all. It allows employers to continue to hire illegal aliens, enticing millions more parents to bring their children here illegally and stay long enough for them to become high school students and demand another amnesty in a few years.
No. 6: DREAM leaves intact the chain migration system that will allow these 2.1 million illegal aliens to eventually send for millions more relatives.
Rather quickly, the amnestied illegal aliens would be able to get green cards for their parents. And millions of additional relatives would be able to start planning their applications and getting in line. This starts with adult siblings and moves on to aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.
A large percentage of the illegal aliens in the U.S. today are extended family members of the illegal aliens who got amnesty in 1986 and also those in the six more-limited amnesties in the 1990s.
Submitted by Maria (not verified) on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 16:38.
Actually, you're really REALLY misinformed. According to the latest Migration Policy Institute report on the DREAM Act, only 38% of those who may be eligible for the DREAM Act will gain their legal residency. So those 2 or 3 million people you're talking about.. false. Also, First Focus released a poll that said 70% of U.S. citizens support the DREAM Act, including 60% of Republicans.
The DREAM Act as chain migration is a myth. It'll take 6 years for students to become legal residents, and able to apply for citizenship. Only after they're citizens will they be allowed to petition their parents. ONLY parents/brothers or sisters/daughters or sons. Even then, it would take so many years that it'll not even be worth it to try. No aunts, or uncles, or cousins, or grandmothers, or whatever other relative you can think of.
I'd like you to meet me. Look at all that I've contributed to this country, volunteering, paying taxes, trying to be the best I can be. And then you can tell me, to my face, that I don't belong here. When I dream in English, when I don't see myself living in the country I was born in but the country that raised me. I belong here. These students belong here. We want to contribute, and, no matter what you say, I will continue to fight for a chance to get an education.
Submitted by Sharon McNary at So Calif. Public Radio (not verified) on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 17:05.
Our public radio newsroom is interested in hearing about the experiences that shaped your views of immigration, including your take on the Dream Act.
To respond confidetially, paste this link in your browser:
www.scpr.org/network/questions/immigration
We use the responses to help inform our news coverage on immigration issues.
Thansk, looking forward to hearing your story.
Sharon McNary
Public Insight Journalism at KPCC
Southern California Public Radio
Submitted by A.W. (not verified) on Sun, 09/19/2010 - 20:30.
Maria, thank you for your post. The DREAM Act is important for all of us who think that the United States will be better off making use of the energy, earning power, and talents of the millions of young people who will benefit from this act, rather than putting our heads in the sand and pretending that keeping them locked in low-level cash jobs and living in the shadows is a solution.
The choice isn't between benefitting from their contributions versus sending them to some other country. The choice is between making sure that today's generation can get their papers the same way our grandparents did -- by showing up, working hard, voting with their feet to make the United States of America their home -- or whether we're going to reverse the policies that have made our country so desirable for so many years.
We can start turning new immigrants away, and in 20 or 30 years we're going to look like Italy or Japan -- aging population, shrinking workforce, and growing social unbalance. Meantime, Canada or whichever other industrialized country decides to capialize on these ambitious people (because nobody gets up and leaves their country without very good reason) will be laughing all the way to the bank.
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