Let me preface this entry by paraphrasing Frank Wu: we're all social scientists - it's just that most of us are really bad at it. And that's the problem.
The DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a proposed federal bill that would give the children of undocumented immigrants the chance to gain legal status if they graduated from high school and sought to attend college or serve in the military. There are several technical details, such as what qualifies as attending college or the number of years of military service - this page lays out those details.
How does this affect APIAs? According to the Department of Homeland Security, an estimated 9% of unauthorized immigrants in 2006 were born in Asia - Vietnam, China, Korea, India, and the Philippines. In absolute numbers, this comes out to about 1.1 million people. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that most illegal immigrant families have children born in the US. I will note that this is a generalization, and a distributional figure - what percentage of families in different immigrant populations has US-born children - should qualify the PHC's findings.
It often seems that discussion about APIA issues revolves around broad societal and cultural trends - model minority, perpetual foreigner, representation in the media. That's why I decided to turn around and look at specific legislation affecting APIAs. Although the DREAM Act affects APIAs less than other groups by proportion, 1.1 million people are far too many to neglect.
In reading arguments against the DREAM Act's passing, I've found a streak of nativism. "Unfair", "cutting in line" and "our parents were legally here first" crop up in discussion like hundreds of angry weeds. Make no mistake, the bill's opponents most likely do feel that it is genuinely unfair. To quote Frank Wu again, it does no one any good to claim that others have no principles. But there's more to the opposition than just vitriol and a different definition of fairness. There's something deeper in the bitterness permeating this bill's existence, and that's the question of what it means to be not an American with citizenship, but rather an American.
It's easy to conflate the two. I would argue that someone born in the US, someone raised in the US, someone who has learned and socialized and achieved in the US is an American. I would argue that citizenship is artificial, except that it provides very real social benefits. Should someone who has spent their youth in the US have opportunity wrenched away simply because their parents came here illegally? Are they no longer Americans simply because their parents don't have legal citizen status? It's a matter of identity and claims to identity, among other things.
These questions are entangled in other issues, as well. Reform of immigration law has become an issue in the upcoming election. An inefficient and slow immigration process contributes to the rates of illegal immigration. But it would take far more time and text space than one blog entry to cover all the facets of immigration and the DREAM Act, because this is a complex issue with no small amount of passion and no small number of stakeholders on either side.
Currently, the DREAM Act is in legislative limbo. The official page in the Library of Congress can be found here.
arthur
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2 comments:
As a member of MIRA (Migrant and Immigrant Rights Awareness)last semester we advocated for the passage of the DREAM Act as it impacts so many immigrants and children of immigrants across the board. When some read the specifics about the legislation that Arthur briefly mentions, to be honest it strikes a chord as being a bit more conservative than one (I) might hope for. There are many conditions to what qualifies a student, and then following successful completion of either college or military service, there are very strict conditions allowing an individual to stay and apply for citizenship. As Professor Silvia Pedraza said in a lecture, successful immigration reform must often come in pairs, one that meets the "security needs" that some Americans look for, and the other side that addresses more humanitarian concerns. The DREAM Act seems to err on the side of the former. In my opinion, and I wish this was one that was shared across the board, no person is illegal, and to label an undocumented immigrant as illegal is criminalizing a human being exercising their human rights. However, it is still a step in the right direction and perhaps a necessary step for more humanitarian legislation to follow. With this in mind, I encourage everyone to look more into this piece of legislation which has such a great impact on all our lives for various reasons, and letting your representatives and senators know that their constituents will not stand to allow fellow Americans be denied the right to an education because a lack of documentation.
I agree, and it's regretful that even a step in the right direction is still smaller than it should be. That's politics. Even the DREAM Act in its current incarnation hasn't been passed. It's a sticky issue, and it'll take time for better legislation to make it through.
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