With DREAM Act Vote Nearing, Student Activists Reveal Status To Show Importance Of Legislation

With Congress tentatively set to vote on the DREAM Act this week, students in California are revealing their undocumented status to show that there are many students currently in college who would benefit from the passage of this legislation.

Diana Marcum of The Los Angeles Times has more in her article Students Want the DREAM Act to become Reality:

The student body president at Cal State Fresno. The drum major at UCLA. Student senators, class presidents, team captains and club officers at community colleges.Scores of student leaders across California are illegal immigrants who came to this state as children.

With a more conservative Congress taking over in January, there is an increased awareness among student activists that this may be the last time they get an up or down vote on the DREAM Act: 

With Congress expected to vote as early as this week on immigration reform that would give these students a pathway to legal status, a new generation of scholars who were raised in California but not born here are shedding their secrecy and speaking about their lives. They have a sense of urgency. If the bill, known as the Dream Act, does not pass before a more conservative Congress takes power in January, it is unlikely to pass for years to come.

In California it is becoming increasingly obvious that undocumented immigrants have become key components of college campuses state wide:

William Perez, a professor at Claremont Graduate University who specializes in education and immigration, said undocumented student leaders are not uncommon. He followed a group of 200 undocumented students primarily in California from high school through college and found that 78% held some sort of leadership position, from editor of the yearbook to captain of a sports team. Twenty-nine percent had a role in student government. Twelve percent were student body presidents. "It wasn't what I was expecting to find. We always hear that poverty and legal struggles are predictors of academic failure," Perez said. "I was scratching my head. I double-checked and triple-checked my numbers. But the more I presented my research, the more I came to believe this is the way the students expressed their American self-identity. People were telling them, 'You don't belong. You can't contribute.' This was their way of refuting that."

Lets hope that those members of Congress still on the fence as to whether or not to vote in the affirmative for the DREAM Act take the brave actions and contributions that undocumented students have shown and given to colleges all over California.