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We were in the room for Senator Marco Rubio’s speech today in Miami, Florida at the Hispanic Leadership Network Conference. During the speech, two brave DREAMers interrupted Senator Rubio asking why he doesn’t support undocumented immigrants. "Why do you not support undocumented immigrants?", one brave DREAMer asked. The crowd immediately booed the DREAMers as security approached them. Senator Rubio asked security to let them stay in the room to hear his response as he would approach that subject during his speech, but the DREAMers were already being escorted out of the room. Watch the video:
Earlier this week, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas announced to the world that he is an undocumented immigrant.
The full article is worth a read as it tells his story in a way that captures the complexity of the brokenness of the immigration system. It's honest in describing his struggle to understand why identity is so tied to citizenship by mainstream thinking (it shouldn't be) as well as the help he's received from mentors to maintain his secret. Vargas then channels all of it to pushing the political debate to a more sane and just conversation.
But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don't ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.
Last year I read about four students who walked from Miami to Washington to lobby for the Dream Act, a nearly decade-old immigration bill that would provide a path to legal permanent residency for young people who have been educated in this country. At the risk of deportation - the Obama administration has deported almost 800,000 people in the last two years - they are speaking out. Their courage has inspired me.
The students mentioned were the walkers involved with the Trail of Dreams project: Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, Carlos Roa and Juan Rodriguez. They, along with countless other DREAMers across the country, have spent the past few years dragging the political establishment kicking and screaming toward justice for migrant youth through passage of the D.R.E.A.M. Act, which stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.
Watching and supporting the DREAMers in action has been a personal education for me as a migrant/human rights advocate because it has taught me the humbling lesson of privilege that I possess as a U.S.-born citizen.
When I started blogging in early 2005, there was little information (at least at the sites that I visited), with respect to the militarization of the U.S./Mexico border region and the racial profiling of Latinos. I felt an obligation to share my experience as a mestizo who always conveniently got extra attention from law enforcement; plus it also allowed me to celebrate my indigenous culture that was & is under assault by a 21st Century Conquistador Mentality.
Last summer, the DREAMactivists began organizing a series of civil disobedience acts to raise the political stakes on lawmakers who deserved the heat. Senator McCain, who has betrayed his former colleague and friend Senator Kennedy with lunacy, had his office taken over with a sit-in. I attended the vigil outside of the Pima County Jail on the night of the students' arrest but was able to drive four minutes back to my comfortable home and life after it was over.
The DREAMers don't have that luxury; nor can they afford to wait for the political establishment to grudgingly toss them crumbs of justice.
National migrant advocacy groups and allied lawmakers have resisted the leadership that the students have provided. Rep. Luis Gutierrez called their tactics a waste of time as recently as last November, yet he is seen as their biggest advocate in the House. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid was pressured at Netroots Nation in 2010 by the scariest sight to any lawmaker afraid of a mustard seed-worth of political courage: students in cap and gowns.
In the words of Matias Ramos, one of the silent protestors:
Yahaira, Lizbeth, Prerna and I understand the political gridlock that causes not only the DREAM Act, but most legislative proposals to be stuck in the current Congress. We have seen the obstructionism to all parts of the agenda, and felt the heightened rhetoric against immigrants seep into the national conversation. But regardless of all these things, we wanted our silent presence to let Reid know that we expect more from him at a time when the story of undocumented immigrants is so often distorted.
The DREAM Act failed to pass in the lame duck session of Congress last winter despite the efforts of Senator Reid to push it through. The President called it his "biggest disappointment" of the session; but for the DREAMers and their now most prominent face, Jose Antonio Vargas, a question remains:
Why the delay in relief while deportations increase?
Until that's answered and resolved, migrant communities and their allies are right to call out lawmakers, regardless of party affiliation. This about their lives & livelihood and it's time for the Beltway to listen to their stories and ponder what it means to be American.
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Nearly a decade ago, America's War on Terror began as a manhunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But over the next nine years, that anti-terrorism effort evolved into a multi-faceted crusade: birthing a new national security agency, blossoming into two bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, institutionalizing the racial profiling and surveillance of Muslim Americans and even redefining unauthorized Latin American immigration as-of all things-a national security issue. Now, in the wake of Osama Bin Laden's death, which elements of that crusade will persist or expand and which-if any-will dissolve?
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Arizona lawmakers are considering two bills that would block undocumented immigrants' access to education to an even greater degree than current state law.
Check out America's Voice new weekly resource, "Immigration Insider," which takes an in-depth look at immigration politics, leading up to the November election. SUBSCRIBE to receive Immigration Insider in your inbox every Tuesday-- absolutely gratis.
Immigration Insider | Election 2010
A vote on the DREAM Act is delayed, but the debate itself could boost Dems' chances this fall. CA candidates attempt extreme makeovers to woo Latino voters. Rep. Bilbray blasts DREAM supporters as "accomplices to murder." FOX News is furious... with Stephen Colbert. Marco Rubio speaks Spanish. America's Voice teams up on Spanish ad blitz to show who's blocking immigration reform.
The fate of almost a million lives could be decided in the next six hours. As a voter, as a millenial, as a migrant, as a Guatemalan, I'm writing to say that I will be watching along with the vast majority of those who will determine the future of the United States of America.
It is imperative that you focus on these Senators. If you've called already, call again. If you've called again, ask five friends to do the same. If you've done all that, here are some more actions you can take.
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain's office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Carlos and I'm a 23 year old undocumented immigrant from Caracas, Venezuela. I want to legalize my immigration status in this country through the passage of DREAM Act this year. For too long have I lived in the U.S. without papers. It has been over 20 years, now. I want to legalize my immigration status in order to fulfill my dreams of becoming a young professional in architecture.
No matter what the cause, it’s always the individual stories that resonate deeply. These stories really shed light on how broken the immigration system really, giving us deep insights into the immigrant experience.
Vozmob or “Mobile Voices” is an open-source platform that gives immigrant day laborers in L.A. access to the digital sphere by letting them use cellphones and MMS technology to create photographic, narrative slide-shows as a way to share stories about their lives and communities. In “Working Hands,” a seamstress uses photographs to illustrate the painstakingly detailed and skillful work done by immigrant workers across Los Angeles. The images tell the story of personal dignity and pride in the work done by hundreds of people across the nation.
Vozmob harnesses the power of personal stories to change the way immigrant communities are perceived. In an early Vozmob workshop, a Google search for the phrase “day laborer” revealed a disturbing stereotype, that many crimes are committed by illegal aliens who work as day laborers. By allowing immigrant workers to share their lives, both within their community and outside, the project launched by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California is changing these false perceptions.
The power of storytelling has been embraced as dramatically by the DREAM Act movement, a movement led by undocumented youth to claim their right to live freely. A moving narrative by Matias Ramos, an immigrant rights advocate since high school describes what he went through while facing deportation. An excerpt from Chapter 1, “The Deported”-
Rush hour traffic in Downtown Minneapolis, and it’s snowing again. I look out the blurry window and can barely see the faces of the people in the van next to ours. I know for a fact, however, that nobody in that packed freeway can see me or any of the other six illegal immigrants on our way to be deported from the United States. The two ICE agents sitting in the front live in a different world, their radio muting any sounds from us: the illegals in the back. An unmarked van, owned by the Department of Homeland Security, is taking us to a county jail in Albert Lea, Minnesota, near the border with Iowa. There, we will wait for our deportation date when the paperwork clears….I try to get my mind somewhere else by going back to the church songs we sang as kids…
In Chapter 2, “We don’t have papers,”, Matias candidly writes about his lack of papers, and his involvement with the DREAM Act movement-
Way before being trapped in a van in Minneapolis, and because my papers expired, I started working for immigration reform in the United States. I work on immigration because I don’t have papers. There are a lot of people like me. They should really be doing something else, but they work on immigration. They have degrees in engineering, political science, and education. They have acting careers and business plans on hold – while they work on immigration…I did not go back to Argentina in 2008 because we had just helped Obama win and because we were going to work hard to pass the DREAM Act in the first 100 days. The DREAM Act is an old but little-known proposal to start reforming immigration like you would start rescuing a sinking ship: with the kids…
Some days it is hard to be optimistic. But it’s stories like these, from the hundreds of day laborers whose work goes unnoticed on a daily basis and brave activists like Matias, that power the movement. So don’t stop reading, watching, learning, sharing and telling stories. And whatever you do, don’t stop dreaming.
My name is Nico and I’m undocumented. I’m coming out of the shadows because I am no longer afraid. I came to this country in 1992, following my mother to the land where the bread that would feed her children was. I have recently lost my mother to cancer, undoubtedly from the chemical factory she worked at most of her life. She was unable to demand better health and safety conditions due to her “status.” But she kept on working for me and the rest of my family. She worked everyday in fear not knowing if “la migra” would come and take her away from us. Now she is buried in the land of freedom, the land where she’s considered a criminal. I’m standing up today for her, myself, and the millions of families like ours.
Nico was just one of dozens of undocumented youth who took the decision to take to the streets and “come out” of their undocumented status in mobilizations across the country yesterday. “Coming Out of the Shadows Week” is an initiative of Dream Activist and the Chicago-based Immigrant Youth Justice League which which will culminate in the nation-wide “March for America”. Inspired by gay rights activism, the initiative empowers undocumented youth who are tired of being persecuted by the system to stand up and break the silence about their status.
Its kick off began yesterday in Chicago when eight undocumented youth surrounded by a thousand supporters holding signs saying “Undocumented and Unafraid” gathered outside Senator Richard Durbin’s office to ensure the introduction of the bipartisan immigration reform bill in the Senate. 26 year old University of Illinois student Tania Unzueta, one of the founders of the Immigrant Youth Justice League, was one of the eight.
Like thousands of others, Tania was brought to the U.S. on a tourist visa by her parents at the age of 10, who stayed on with the hope of a better future. Despite being captain of the swim team, Tania has always had to keep her status a secret and make up stories to justify not having a driver’s license and not being able to travel out of the country with her swim team. Tired and frustrated of being trapped in a scenario that she had no hand in creating, she has taken steps to become active in the movement for the passage of the Dream Act. Speaking about “Coming Out” as a radical and extremely personal act, she said,
It’s scary on one hand, but it’s also liberating. I feel like I’ve been hiding for so long…There’s a sense of urgency. We’re angry. We’re frustrated. We thought this would be a good strategy to get our community mobilized.
Every year, about 65,000 undocumented immigrants graduate from U.S. high schools and live in constant fear of being kicked out of college, losing their scholarships, and not being able to apply for jobs. Research indicates that there are currently 3.2 million undocumented young adults living in a state of limbo whose status prevents them from using their education to become fully contributing members of society. First introduced by Senator Richard Durbin and Representative Howard Burmen, the provisions of the Dream Act allows undocumented youth to be eligible for a conditional path to citizenship. If you are an undocumented youth and need help to come out, here’s some great advice on why and how to do so. To get started, check out Gabriel’s brave coming out story.
The pressure mounting on Congress seems to be yielding some results. Three grassroots meetings are slated for today, ones that we hope will lead to concrete action. At 1 pm, grassroots leaders will meet with senior White House staff. This will be followed by a much publicized meeting between President Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) (who are working on a bipartisan immigration reform bill), seen as a move to insert immigration back onto a congressional agenda. And finally, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is also meeting with the President today to discuss health care and immigration.
Ed. Note: After a brief hiatus, the Diaspora is back! We're very excited to have Erin Rosa on board for this project. Please stay tuned for a the latest developments on the immigration reform front every Thursday morning.
Fed up with Congress and frustrated with President Barack Obama's brief mention of immigration reform in the State of the Union address, immigrant rights supporters are now organizing around the clock to push legislators to move on reform in 2010. It will not be an easy feat.
Congress is already bogged down with health care reform and a lingering economic crisis. While Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has proposed a bill in the House of Representatives to provide a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, immigration reform could be doomed for 2010 if it's not introduced in the Senate by this Spring. Otherwise, it's very unlikely that Congress will get around to debating the issue by the end of the year.
Aware of these bitter facts-and even more cognizant of the human rights abuses that will continue so long as the status quo is maintained-reform proponents are gearing up for a number of key battles to improve the immigration system.
La marcha
Born from dissatisfaction with Congress and Obama's inability to deliver reform, organizers from around the country are preparing to march on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. On March 21, the first day of Spring. The objective is to draw tens of thousands of immigrant rights supporters to Capitol Hill. As New America Media reports, March for America "will be a test of immigrant advocates' organizing capacity and their increasing use of technology to stoke a popular groundswell on immigration."
The march, which is organized by the Reform Immigration For America coalition, will also "bring together advocates focused on different parts of the immigration policy agenda," including supporters of agricultural labor, better immigrant detention standards, and the DREAM Act, federal legislation that provide a pathway to citizenship for certain immigrants who entered the United States before the age of 16.
While mainstream media coverage of the march has been relatively quiet, with many English-language outlets ignoring it completely, the organizing behind the scenes has been even more hush hush. This is a massive grassroots effort to raise public awareness around the country. Members from hundreds of state immigration groups are attending churches, making phone calls, knocking on doors, and organizing caravans to get people to Washington in March. Even mainstream Spanish-language outlets have gotten involved and encouraged their audiences to contact the Reform Immigration For America campaign for all the latest information.
Perhaps most refreshing is that unlike the immigration reform fight in 2007, which was plagued by a number of organizational hurdles, national immigration organizations in Washington have reached out to grassroots groups across the nation for the march. As Bill Chandler, an executive director for the Mississippi Immigrant's Rights Alliance, told the National Radio Project recently, "The grassroots groups were left out of the discussion [in 2007] and what we're trying to do is make sure that doesn't happen again."
Speed bumps on the Trail of Dreams
While organizers are preparing for his month's march, four young students are continuing a 1,500 mile trek on foot, dubbed the "Trail of Dreams," in support of the DREAM Act. The students, three of whom are undocumented immigrants, started their journey on Jan 1. in Miami and are currently hiking through Georgia on their way to Washington, where they are expected to arrive in May. Along the way, they are educating people about how the DREAM Act would help kids like them.
Under current law, some of the walkers still face deportation, even though they were only children when their parents brought them into the United States. While the four students have encountered a lot of support from the communities that they've visited, they've also come across some ugly opposition. As AlterNet notes, a recent Ku Klux Klan rally in Georgia "was timed to occur when the Trail of Dreams walkers were passing through the area," and there was a "a stark difference between the messages of the two groups: one for tolerance and human rights, the other for hatred and racism.
Immigration Detention Abuses Continue
The Varick Federal Detention Facility, a privately-run immigration prison in New York city that was overseen by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, is closing and relocating approximately 250 of its inmates to a New Jersey lockup. As RaceWire reports, the move is "partially because of public pressure" since "Varick has a well-documented track record of detainee abuse and fatal medical negligence," but "shutting down one facility doesn't address the broader system."
When immigration officials granted a media tour to The Nation shortly before the prison closed, reporter Jackie Stevens described the scene inside: "The dorms are packed with rows of narrow beds, fifty in all; the law library has dated resources; there is no privacy; and there is no natural light, ever."
On top of that, even "the agents hosting the tour seemed embarrassed and emphasized the upcoming transfer as we looked through a long hall window at men slouching, feet on the floor, using their beds as backless chairs." Varick is just one of many immigration detention facilities with documented abuses, and while the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that ultimately controls ICE, has promised to reform the system, they have still refused to introduce any legally-binding regulations for detainee treatment.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
On January 1st, four courageous students embarked on a 1500-mile symbolic walk from Miami to Washington D.C. to strengthen and inspire the immigration movement. Inspired by the idea of non-violent resistance, the Trail of Dreams has been joined by hundreds of inspired folks who walk along with the students in small towns and cities, to stand together for the passage of the DREAM Act.
But Felipe, Gabby, Carlos and Juan have also met with their share of challenges along the way. Coping with limited resources, finding shelter at each stop on their journey, and being away from their families for four months, they have also had to contend with some opposition to their cause. Now in the deep south, the most recent, and decidedly the most jarring of these, has been their encounter with the Ku Klux Klan in Nahunta, Georgia last week.
Yes, we too thought the KKK had no place outside of the embarrassments of history. Apparently we were all wrong on that. While the group is not very strong or active nowadays, there are still a few thousand Klan members scattered around the country, 50 of whom decided to hold a rally “against the Latino invasion” in Georgia at the same time that the “dreamwalkers” were passing through the area. One of the students, 20 year old Juan Rodriguez, wrote about the encounter on the Trail of Dreams blog -
Today we drove to Nahunta, GA where the Ku Klux Klan was organizing an anti-immigrant demonstration, under the premise that “God put each race in their respective continent and they were meant to stay there”. I can’t help but keep being amused by these concepts that the very organization can’t seem to be able to uphold appropriately. Is the KKK secretly on a campaign to reclaim all lands back for the indigenous people of North America and preparing for the voyage back to Europe? I find this highly unlikely….It is disappointing that after so many years of social reformation, we still have organizations filled with so much hate convening and gaining the support of communities….Ultimately, the success of today was to be able to stand hand in hand with our friends from the NAACP; singing liberation songs together and acknowledging our united struggle for racial justice. We ALL deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
It seems unacceptable that while the walkers and the NAACP (who had organized a rally to counter the KKK) were promoting tolerance, dignity, and humanity, the KKK were propagating hatred and racism. And it’s far from over. After completing 600 miles of their walk, the four students are in a part of the country that is notorious for its anti-immigrant sentiment. This week they will enter Gwinnett County, Georgia, home of Sheriff Conway, known for his anti-immigrant stance.
It takes a lot of courage and determination to do what the dreamwalkers are doing and that’s why they need your support. Check where your Member of Congress stands on immigration reform and let them know what you think about it.
In this day in age communication has bridged all gaps. Well, most of them, but if you want to know about a specific issue is very easy to get plugged in and be flooded with information about it.
People often compliment me for how well read I am on current issues, especially on the immigration system and its issues in this country, but the reality of it is that all it takes is a couple of tweaks here and there in your routine within the internet in order to get as much information as possible. Moreover, you can be on the move and have a basic cell-phone with a text message plan and still be kept up to date on recent developments in the news.
What I am trying to say is that we should all be a little be a little more open and receptive to the information available to us, the more we know the more tools we have to combat the misinformation that is out there, or spread the accomplishment we have compiled so far. Within this post I will be covering Twitter and how to use it as a pro-migrant tool, not only to get direct updates from on the trenches activists to publications from various forms of media, but also to help spread awareness about immigration system in the United States. For all intents and purposes we will focus on covering the DREAM Act and help promote it within the Twitterverse (common term to depict the universe within Twitter).
So lets treat this as the Twitter guide to the DREAM Act, I will be answering many FAQs and if you have any remaining questions or points that I missed or did not cover you can always drop me a comment. So here we go:
Why is Twitter so important to the DREAM Act and its movement?
In a world that seems to be clogged up with blogs, editorials, news articles, and spam it seems almost impossible to read every single piece or at least go on the hunt for it across the vast depths of the internet.
Twitter takes care of this by using asking the question “What are you doing?” in which users may reply in a variety of ways. To the average Joe, Twitter is nothing more of a Facebook status updater, where they will often type “Im eating a slice of pizza yum…”, but us here at the DREAM Activist team and in the pro-migrant movement use Twitter as a may to publicize everything we do, from our blogs to what others are doing, in order to spread awareness in a quick, short, and easy way for others to see.
Often you’ll see things like this coming from our Twitter account” “@DreamAct: “New Blog Post ‘Post Name Here’”. Upon reading this, our friends (followers as denoted by Twitter) will continue to re-post this over to their accounts so their ‘followers’ can see what they are reading as well. In turn this creates a huge chain of what are known as ‘RTs’ or “re-tweets” that give credit to the original source in which the article came from.
However, we are not the only ones Tweeting about the DREAM Act. There are articles published every day covering the story of a DREAM Act student, one of our actions, or an organization that is promoting the DREAM Act. By “re-tweeting” and organizing the tweets we can create a network of pro-migrant advocates that keep us informed of news being published within their communities, or actions that they are conducting.
I am very grateful as always to have your support. It's been three months since the day I started my campaign to stop my deportation. Thanks to my pro bono attorneys Shannon Underwood and Karol Brown, partners at Global Justice Law Group PLCC , my deportation deadline on September 25th was extended through a Sua Sponte legal filing. As of today I have 21 days left until what could be my final day in America, which has become my home. Senator Maria Cantwell's staff is still analyzing their options on my private bill. The hope is still alive!
Campaign's Website & "ALONSO LIVE" Show LAUNCHED
These past three weeks after seeing that my campaign has been losing momentum, I decided to do something about this and take it to the next level. Last Wednesday I launched a website for my campaign. The purpose of this site is to make it easier for you to further learn about my case, its latest updates, and to act on my behalf in the easiest way possible by integrating various social media and online tools in one place.
Below are the screenshots of the "ALONSO DREAM Act Candidate Facing Deportation" website and of my new show "ALONSO LIVE" that broadcasts everyday at 8pm PST.
The idea of the live show is to provide you with a more entertaining way for you to keep in touch with my campaign and thus act on my behalf on time when needed. I am looking forward to stay, join all national efforts in support of the DREAM Act and Comprehensive Immigration reform, and help others become socially aware. I am thinking only of the best, working only for the best, and expecting only the best.
As always thank you for your support,
And God Bless You.
My name is Alonso and I qualify for a legislation that is based on Earned Legalization; the DREAM Act.
However I am facing deportation and these past two months I have been running a campaign to stop my deportation.
Some suggested that I have been working too hard and that I should take a break sometime. This weekend I decided to relax by watching a movie. All through the movie I kept being hit by images that reminded me of my own life and the DREAM Act so I decided make a video about it. I hope you like it.
Maegan at Vivir Latino, Prerna at Change.org, and Marisa Trevino at Latina Lista have already expressed their thoughts and I thought I'd add my own. I'll be the first to admit that I was skeptical of Gutierrez's announcement. The way Gutierrez and other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) have treated the migrant youth movement leaves much to be desired. Why members of the CHC have still not co-sponsored the Development, Youth, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act is beyond me. The justification offered is that they want to wait for the DREAM Act to be a part of comprehensive immigration reform, but that doesn't mean you can't cosponsor the DREAM Act to show your support! 100 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have already cosponsored the DREAM Act, and it is an embarrassment that a supposed "champion" of migrant rights like Gutierrez has not.
My name is Alonso and I qualify for a legislation that is based on Earned Legalization; the DREAM Act.
However I am facing deportation and these past two months I have been running a campaign to stop my deportation.
I have been doing some research lately as an attempt to further understand my current situation. I feel that what I have learned so far it has provided me with a good start to defend myself and educate others. This new obstacle in my life is not over yet and I plan to make of it a positive experience.
Please keep an eye open since I will need your help anytime soon. Thank you for your support!
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Yesterday, Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) unveiled his "
Receive information on the latest action items, media campaigns, and legislative initiatives from ProMigrant
No spam or press release dumps from DC advocacy groups, lobbyists, or politicos. No requests for donations, or re-directs to astroturf groups looking to harvest your e-mail information.
Just real action for real change from real grassroots activists.
