CROSSING BORDERS: A Column on Immigration Law

March 2005 – “The Dream Act”

In the last two months, I have met three clients who might have benefited from the Dream Act, proposed legislation that has been tabled (and defeated) in Congress several times in the last few years. All three were bright young women who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were toddlers or “tweens”. All three had grown up in the U.S., attended high school here and recently graduated with top grades. All three spoke fluent English and would have been accepted into postsecondary education programs if the law had allowed it. And all three had recently learned that upon turning eighteen, the door of opportunity for them here had begun to close; the law was asking them to return to their birth countries, which they had never really known.

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah first introduced the Dream Act in 2002 for consideration before the Senate (the House introduced a similar bill at about the same time). The proposed legislation, also known as the “Student Adjustment Act”, would create a legal mechanism to help young people like my clients to seek Permanent Resident Status in the U.S. The initial bill was defeated, so Senator Hatch teamed up with Senator Durbin of Illinois and reintroduced a compromise version in 2003. The newer version proposed granting some of these young people an opportunity to gain conditional residency status for six years; thereafter, they could apply to have conditions removed on their residency if they could show good moral character.

Last year, at the 2004 American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) national conference, AILA’s lobbying arm announced that the Dream Act appeared to be gaining momentum in the Senate and they were hopeful that it would pass by the fall. However, at the eleventh hour, a group of anti-immigration Senators managed to introduce some amendments that scuttled the bill. That fall, President Bush campaigned heavily on a promise of immigration reform, but his current agenda focuses mainly on a “guestworker” program to help undocumented workers. Meanwhile, momentum for the Dream Act appears to have slowed in the Senate, and the media appears to be losing interest for now.

I decided to write about the Dream Act because I happened to meet these three clients and I found their stories to be moving. From their perspective, the current law makes no sense: they are supposed to return home but they don’t remember their birth countries; for them, this is home. They look, dress, act, and sound like Americans, and they speak better English than Spanish. But after eighteen years of growing up here with friends and schoolmates that are moving on to other things, they are stuck in legal limbo; not recognized legally by the U.S. and not recognized culturally by their birth countries.

As the years go on, the logic of demographics suggests that more and more young people will fall into this category: smart and successful high school graduates with nowhere to go. The problems that started the Dream Act will only grow with time. Isn’t it time that we started to talk about it again?

David Stewart is Immigration Services Director at International House, a Charlotte-based non-profit. He is a Massachusetts-certified attorney, and a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). This column is intended to offer general information about immigration law only. Readers who need advice about their specific situations should consult an immigration lawyer.