For decades, immigrants and their allies have been fighting on both the state and national level for greater equality and civil rights. Recently, one law in particular—the “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors” Act—has been a focal point of national struggle.
The federal DREAM Act, introduced in 2001, would have repealed a measure passed in 1996 that penalized states for providing in-state tuition to undocumented students. The bill would also establish a path to permanent residency to qualifying undocumented students.
Democrats gut the federal DREAM Act
Despite their promises to fight for the rights of the immigrant community, the Democrats did not pursue any comprehensive reform when they controlled the executive and legislative branches, and they continuously altered the DREAM Act to make it more acceptable to the right wing and the Pentagon.
When Senate Democrats reintroduced the DREAM Act in 2010, they removed the language that would have banned states from denying in-state tuition to undocumented youth. They made it much harder to gain residency status under the Act. They used it to encourage military enlistment by promising legal status to undocumented
recruits and even attempted to attach the bill to the war budget. The Democrats’ new version of the bill added new preconditions for undocumented youth—forcing them to go through Homeland Security checks and medical examinations, and potentially excluding them if they were deemed likely to end up on public assistance.
Still, the bill did not pass. As a result, various states took up modified DREAM Act legislation. Activists across the country have been fighting for these state-level bills, which cannot adjust one’s federal immigration status, but provide access to state benefits, such as in-state tuition. Access to such opportunities could improve the quality of life for immigrant families, who often struggle under difficult working conditions and extremely low wages in an environment of hostility and racism.
Thirteen states have passed their own versions of the DREAM Act, including Maryland, Florida and New York.
The battle over state-level legislation
Passed in 2011, Maryland’s DREAM Act allows in-state tuition rates at public colleges to students who have lived in the state for at least three years and whose parents paid taxes during this time. But efforts by racist right-wing forces have resulted in Maryland’s first referendum-bypetition in 20 years to attempt to overturn the law.
Progressive forces across the state have been mobilizing in the streets to combat the lies of the right wing. The ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) in Baltimore launched a campaign to defend the DREAM Act, working aggressively to ask voters to pledge to defend the law as part of a greater grassroots fight-back effort.
Like the Maryland DREAM Act, the proposed Florida DREAM Act would have allowed students who attended a Florida high school and graduated with a 3.0 GPA or better to attend Florida colleges at in-state tuition rates, but the law was struck down in early 2012.
In an effort to repair the damage done among Latino constituents in Florida, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has proposed a new version of the federal DREAM Act that has been described as “a dream without a dream.” Rubio’s DREAM Act would not grant a pathway to citizenship or permanent residency.
In New York State, the DREAM Act was recently passed, but Gov. Cuomo left it out of the state budget. The New York State DREAM Act as passed supports the state’s Tuition Assistance Program and other scholarship programs. New York is the fourth state to pass DREAM Act legislation that offers government financial assistance.
According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, funding for the New York DREAM Act should only cost 0.05 percent of the state’s annual income tax revenue. (Huffington Post, April 3) But Democratic leaders like Cuomo only prioritize immigrant rights when it is politically expedient to do so.
The various DREAM Acts have sparked a lot of energy and excitement in the immigrant community, especially among undocumented youth who would benefit from them directly. It is critical that progressive people organize support for these new efforts to expand educational access and the rights of immigrant students. More broadly, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is fully committed to rebuilding the mass immigrant rights movement to win full and equal rights for all who live and work in the United States.
