One of the greatest challenges facing this country is a lack of commitment to education. Students across the country dread going to school. Many fail to see the importance of education in their lives and spend every minute in the classroom longing for the day they no longer have to be there.
On the other hand, we have people like Lizbeth Mateo, Tania Unzueta, Mohammad Abdollahi and Yahaira Carrillo. These students, all undocumented immigrants, staged a sit-in outside Senator McCain’s office earlier this week to highlight the need to pass the DREAM act before June 15 of this year. The DREAM Act will grant youth who traveled to the United States before the age of 16 a path to citizenship contingent on continuous presence in the country, good behavior, and the attainment of at least a two-year university degree or a two-year commitment to the armed forces.
A far cry from the disinterested slacker student, these four brave young people are willing to put their freedom on the line simply to have the opportunity to go to and graduate from college – an opportunity that so many of us take for granted. Three of the four were recently released from ICE custody but are still facing deportation.
The anti-immigrant movement will have you believe that the DREAM Act makes our country more vulnerable to crime by being “soft on immigration.” But we need only to consider the specifics of the bill to know that this is a flat-out lie. To the contrary, the bill is aimed at folks who have been in the country for most if not all of their youth, encourages law-abiding behavior and incentivizes education.
The DREAM Act not only protects our young immigrant brothers and sisters from the terrible wrong of being uprooted from their families and the country in which they have grown up, but it contributes to the well-being of our society as a whole by encouraging young people to go to and graduate from school.
Please join in me in taking action in solidarity with Lizbeth, Tania, Mohammad, and Yahaira and supporting the American DREAM!
