DREAM ACT: Opposition to immigration proposal from both sides
OCTOBER 4, 2013BYDAVID OLSON
House Speaker John Boehner. AP file photo/Manuel BalceCeneta
Rallies in the Inland area and across the country Saturday will call for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
“Comprehensive” is the key word.
Three years ago, the DREAM Act was a top priority for immigrant-rights groups. It would have provided a path to citizenship for some young undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States since they were children.
The bill passed the House, then controlled by the Democrats, but fell short in the Senate. Back then, most Republicans voted against the DREAM Act and most Democrats voted for it.
Today, Republican leaders such asHouse Speaker John Boehnerand Minority Leader Eric Cantorare backing a roughly similar proposaland Democrats and immigrant-rights groups are opposed.
But the DREAM Act also faces opposition from many Republicans, both in Congress and at the grass roots, who view it as a reward for breaking immigration law.
Immigrant, Latino, Asian-American and other organizations are pushing the comprehensive approach and view a new version of a DREAM Act as not going far enough, and as a ploy to avoid a vote on a comprehensive bill.
Luis Nolasco appears to meet the requirements of the DREAM Act. He is 22, arrived in the United States from Mexico at age 9, earned a psychology degree from Cal State San Bernardino and has no criminal record.
But he opposes any new version of the DREAM Act.
“I’m not going to throw my parents under the bus,” Nolasco told me. “Our parents brought us here to have better opportunities for us. We don’t want to leave them behind so we get ahead.”
Nolasco’s father is a $9-an-hour warehouse worker and his mother is a homemaker. Both, he said, have sacrificed everything for him and his brother.
Nolasco said he and other activists “are tired of compromises” to get immigration-reform legislation passed and doesn’t want the exclusion of non-DREAM-Act immigrants to be the latest.
Robin Hvidston, executive director of the anti-illegal-immigration We The People Rising, also opposes a new DREAM Act, for far different reasons.
She favors “self-deportation”: Tougher enforcement and other measures to make life more difficult for people in the country illegally.
“We do not at all endorse any type of legalization,” she told me. “We’re a great nation because we’re a nation of laws, and our laws should be respected and enforced.”
Hvidston said starting to decide which people in the country illegally should be able to stay and which ones shouldn’t is unworkable.
“Where do you draw the line?” she asked. “A seventeen-and-a-half year old can have amnesty but an 18-year-old can’t?”
Follow me on Twitter: @DavidOlson11
David OlsonReporteratPress-Enterprise/PE.com
David Olsonwrites theMulticultural Empireblog. David reports on diversity, immigration and religion. He has consistently failed to convince his editors to let him expense his meals of pho, sopes, sushi, fulmedames, pupusas and pierogis as multicultural-beat research.|Email David