Every day at the Foothill-DeAnza Community College District we come in contact with highly motivated, talented and law-abiding undocumented immigrant students and residents who live and work in our community.
To deny them a path to legalization would deprive our country of educated, taxpaying participants in the U.S. economy. Senate Bill 2075, known as the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), is proposed federal legislation that will provide conditional permanent residency specifically to undocumented students who graduate from high school and pursue college or join the armed forces.
For many young people, the choice to come to this country was made by their parents. These immigrant children did not violate our immigration laws. They have been raised in this country and are American in every sense, except documentation.
Many of them are doing well in school, plan to complete higher education and enter the job market. These innocent young people, potential contributors to the American economy, are denied legal status, though they have rightly made their way through our public schools. For them and for us, the DREAM Act is a practical common-sense solution amidst this ugly debate about immigration.
And the debate is ugly. Some hope for the massive deportation of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. What they don’t consider is that these immigrants account for 4.9 percent of America’s workforce, according to the Wall Street Journal, contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy. Removing all undocumented persons from our country would be equivalent to deporting every resident of Ohio, the seventh-largest state by population.
When an immigration reform proposal to criminalize undocumented immigrants and those who assist them passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, it sparked protest all over our nation. Deportation and criminalization are not practical solutions and would serve only to polarize a nation built on immigrants.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced her co-sponsorship of SB 2075 last month, stating: “I believe it is in the national interest to provide talented students who have clearly embraced the American dream the incentive to be a responsible, contributing, law-abiding member in our civic society. … This bill would give undocumented high school students who wish to attend college or serve in the armed forces the opportunity to adjust to a lawful status and pursue these goals.”
Sen. Feinstein should be commended for her foresight and courage. Investing in these students is right for America. It is ludicrous and damaging to the U.S. economy to deny employment to college-educated immigrants. Not only will they pay higher taxes and contribute monetarily to our Social Security system and our economy in general, but they will enrich America’s mainstream as vital participants in our society. The debate is now before the Senate. If SB 2075 is not passed, these immigrant students will remain outside of the mainstream through no fault of their own.
The national Parent Teacher Association, the American Association of Community Colleges, and the Foothill-De Anza Community College District’s board of trustees have all endorsed the DREAM Act. Please join these groups in supporting Sen. Feinstein’s effort to make the act no longer a dream, but a reality for hundreds of thousands of America’s students.
