"Our friends and our family are always telling us not to do it," said Francisco Gutierrez, 18, a Georgetown University student who moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 3 and recently revealed his illegal status while advocating for the passage of the DREAM Act. "I tell them we can't be fearful anymore. We can't live our lives afraid that there's always something going to happen to us just because we are undocumented."
Unfortunately, Mr. Gutierrez and dozens of other students who bravely revealed their status now face being found and deported, after the controversial bill buckled under the weight of a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
Introduced, but later denounced by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in 2001, the DREAM Act would allow students who entered the United States illegally before the age of 16 to apply for Legal Permanent Residency, after meeting several qualifications such as having a clean criminal record and completing either two years of college or military service.
In the current volatile political landscape that includes the passage of Arizona's strict immigration law, SB 1070, though, Hatch is now suddenly concerned with what the voters might think:
"The American people want the government to secure our borders, create jobs and reduce the deficit." Hatch said. "Instead, Senate leadership is insisting on ignoring the will of the people and holding our troops hostage by cynically pushing a defense bill chock-full of controversial measures to score cheap political points with its liberal base."
The other "cheap" issue Hatch is referring to is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which after 17 years of forcing gay and lesbian troops to hide their sexual orientation, has been repealed by a vote of 65-31 in the Senate.
It is gravely ironic that the historic moment came on the day that thousands of undocumented youth's dreams were shattered.
Approved by a slight majority of 216-198 in the U.S. House last December 8th, the Dream Act was supported by a broad array of national organizations and individuals, including President Barack Obama, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Such strong support, though, did not weaken the convictions of Republicans who have referred to the bill as a "bail-out for illegal children" and "the gateway to amnesty."
Immigrant rights groups said they planned to turn up the pressure on the Obama administration to slow deportations and end local police enforcement of immigration laws. Students also said they planned to fight for immigrant benefits - though it's not legalization - locally as they've seen anti-illegal immigration activists do to pass tougher enforcement measures in states like Arizona.
"This is a movement," said Nancy Meza, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant and college graduate who wore a University of California, Los Angeles sweatshirt as she watched the televised vote. "We don't have lobbyists and paid staff. It's a movement by students."
President Obama said after the vote that he would continue pushing for the DREAM Act and other steps toward immigration reform:
"It is disappointing that common sense did not prevail today," he said in a statement. "But my administration will not give up on the DREAM Act or on the important business of fixing our broken immigration system."
I emphatically believe that if someone has the courage to make it to this country seeking better opportunities for themselves and their children, they should be allowed to become citizens after the legalization process. They should be afforded the full protection of the United States of America throughout this process, and at its conclusion, have the identical rights and responsibilities as U.S.-born citizens.
This situation, however, needs to be addressed honestly.
There is crime sneaking over the border, there are illegal immigrants abusing our tax system and the Hispanic/Latino community needs to speak out as passionately on these issues as they do about the DREAM Act.
For example, Arizona taxpayers pay out $1.3 billion annually to cover the education, health care and incarceration costs of illegal immigrants, and that does not include the cost of burying those individuals who die attempting to cross the border or the exorbitant cost of investigating and determining their identities.
With our economy in the shambles that it's in, I can understand the need to grasp at something, anything that could possibly reduce our deficit. In Los Angeles it is easier for a Hispanic person to find employment because they speak Spanish, which leaves the probability of other minorities finding employment extremely slim. This development has escalated tension and created animosity towards the Hispanic community, and threatens the tenuous peace that is never far from shattering.
There is encouraging diversity, but there is also pandering for votes, and the political powers that be are veering dangerously close to the latter. While it is true that the parents of these students must ultimately be held accountable for placing their children in a percarious situation, threatening to deport students to countries that they don't remember, to a way of life they have never known, is unnecessarily cruel.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and African-Americans must rally around this issue as well. We, as a people, have also faced persecution and marginalization in this country after being brought here illegally, and Malcolm X's words on April 3, 1964 in his legendary speech "Ballot or the Bullet" still hold true today.
Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now.
As Dreamers take to the streets chanting and crying, threatening continued sit-ins and hunger strikes, the failure of the DREAM Act has forced us once again to re-examine our core values. It is also forcing us to re-define what exactly "Home of the Free" means and how much that freedom costs taxpayers.