On behalf of the student activists on this site, I would like to say that this effort is not about Change.org — it is about garnering support and mobilization for the DREAM Act, about taking back discourse and finding the best way to frame an issue that is unnecessarily divisive. America needs the DREAM Act as much as undocumented students need it — we all lose if this legislation is not passed. America will lose human and financial capital, talented students and a substantial tax-base. The students will lose the chance to gain equality of opportunity in their own country.

About.com Immigration blog picked up the Change.org mobilization story as well:

The children of undocumented parents should not be punished by denying them a chance at legalization. This path to citizenship isn’t a free ride: the DREAM Act requires that these children attend college or enlist in the military and show good moral character. Be the voice for these children. Vote now.

It is true that we are politically disenfranchised, but we are trying to carve a voice for ourselves in as many pro-migrant places as possible.

A DREAM Act student, Maria, has taken it upon herself to get the word out about the DREAM Act. This is how her story goes:

“…My name is Maria and I am a DREAM Act beneficiary. I arrived in this country at the young age of 12, with my parents, from Peru. I am now 21 years old and undocumented. I have grown up in the United States and consider this country my only home. If sent back to Peru, I would be banned from the U.S. for 10 years and the chances of coming back are slim to none. I graduated from high school in 2004 and since then, it has been difficult for me to continue my education as a result of my status. The DREAM Act would help me, and students in my situation, realize our dreams of becoming active members of society by allowing us to attend school or join the military….”

The email is finding itself in the boxes of pro-migrant bloggers online. Then there is Samus Aran with his special message for bloggers online:

I am an undocumented student, and find it extremely difficult to pursue my college education due to a status I inherited from my parents. Being brought to the United States at the age of 12, raised and brought to an American lifestyle, to graduating high school in 2007 at the top of my class. The DREAM Act would help me, and students in my situation, realize our dreams of becoming active members of society by allowing us to attend school or join the military.

Undocumented students are truly using new media this time around to make sure that our voices are not stifled, that we are not completely cast to the side as people play politics with our lives.

Some responses that Juan and Maria are getting

The Republican blogger at The Pink Flamingo puts the ‘Right’ to shame with his blunt rhetoric:

It is sad that the very young people who are so disparate for an education and are risking everything to get it, are the ones who risk being deported back to a life of poverty, depravation, and even death.  They WANT an American Education.  Our lazy, unappreciative, abjectly ignorant natural born American students don’t give a rip about an education - or anything else other than their creature comforts.  Maybe they are the ones who should be deported and let the kids who want to learn do just that.

As I write this, it dawns on me that we are literally ‘barking up the wrong tree’ when it comes to education reform. What if the problem isn’t the “system” but the abjectly stupid, lazy, and over-indulged American children and their equally stupid and ignorant parents?

It is quite obvious Maria puts them to shame.

Mark Silverman, Immigration Attorney and Director of ILRC, has stepped up to the plate and is blasting emails for DREAM Act students. Thanks for always supporting the students Mark!

Other posts in solidarity (please leave comments):

• Underground Undergrads
• Mexico Trucker
• Daily Kos - Duke

What are you doing to ensure that the DREAM Act will pass in 2009?

The problem: Many American students graduate from college and high school each year, and face a roadblock to their dreams: they can’t drive, can’t work legally, can’t further their education, and can’t pay taxes to contribute to the economy just because they were brought to this country illegally by their parents or lost legal status along the way. It is a classic case of lost potential and broken dreams, and the permanent underclass of youth it creates is detrimental to our economy. Former Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has said: “In short, although these children have built their lives here, they have no possibility of achieving and living the American dream. What a tremendous loss for them, and what a tremendous loss to our society.”

The solution: The federal DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), is a bipartisan legislation that would permit these students conditional legal status and eventual citizenship granted that they meet ALL the following requirements:
–if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16, are below the age of 30,
–have lived here continuously for five years,
–graduated from a U.S. high school or obtained a GED
–have good moral character with no criminal record and
–attend college or enlist in the military.

Why should you care? There is no other pathway to citizenship for these students. Besides the injustice of punishing children for the alleged transgressions of their parents, throwing away the talent we have invested in from K-12 and accruing losses in human and financial capital by deporting talented students is bad public policy. The Social Security Administration has recently stated that we need a net increase of 100,000 immigrants each year to ensure Social Security solvency. Passing the DREAM Act would actually help solve the Social Security crisis by creating a larger taxable base of educated Americans that are already in the United States. It would also free some of the backlog that currently plagues the legal immigration system. Also, the DREAM Act in its latest form, does not grant in-state tuition to any student.

Endorsements: Since 2001, almost a 1000 organizations have officially endorsed the bill. Barack Obama has stated that DREAM Act beneficiaries are “American children for all intents and purposes” and has called this a top priority.

Tell President-Elect Obama to pass the DREAM Act in 2009. See DreamActivist.org to get more involved.

From Jan 5 to Jan 15, Change.org has resumed the final round of voting
for ‘Ideas for Change.’ The Top 10 Ideas get presented to Barack Obama
at an event co-hosted with The Case Foundation at the National Press
Club in Washington, DC on January 16th.

Links to vote for the Top 3 ideas in Immigration
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/pass_the_dream_act_now
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/equal_immigration_rights_for_same_sex_binational_couples
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/provide_relief_for_families_of_immigrants

Important - You have 10 votes as a person and as a non-profit /
blogger, it is alright to endorse more than one idea.

ENDORSEMENTS
For bloggers and non-profits, endorsement is quick and easy and you
also get to advertise your site. Click on the “Click Here to Endorse
this Idea” on the right side of each idea you want to endorse, fill in
the details, and submit.

WIDGETS
The code for the widgets is the same — please put those up on your
site.

OUR NEW BADGE

Please put these on your sites to show solidarity with the United We DREAM coalition of 40 organizations fighting for the DREAM Act in 2009.

The above clip is from a larger series done by oneeightfiveTV, check out their youtube page to view the complete series.  If nothing else check out the first and third episodes.  Very nicely done!

Congrats to all DREAMIEs for getting our idea into the second round of voting at Change.org - Voting starts on Monday, Jan 5 so get your contacts, facebook groups, friends and family ready to vote again.

Lets throw our support squarely behind all three ideas.

As expected, ALIPAC and the nativist groups had their ‘idea’ disqualified.

We are looking for sponsors — pro-migrant bloggers and organizations that could lend their support and endorsement to the Change.org voting and also to our petition drive.

Second round voting begins on January 5.

To ensure that no nativist, anti-immigrant ideas get through to the second round, make sure to vote for the following pro-migrant ideas if you have not already. First round voting ends tomorrow.

Update — Looks like ALIPAC and William Gheen are so desperate, they have had to resort to using pro-migrant space to push through their hateful ideas.

Change.org is reluctant to curb the hate speech on the site after what occurred with the 9-11 conspiracy theory idea. It would be interesting to see how they eliminate ideas and present them on Jan 5. Is Change.org really going to advocate ‘enforce all immigration laws’ — not much change, is it?

STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, v. NICHOLAS L. MARTINEZ:

8 U.S.C. § 1325 (2000) declares an alien’s unsanctioned entry into the United States to be a crime. While Congress has criminalized illegal entry into this country, it has not made the continued presence of an illegal alien in the United States a crime unless the illegal alien has previously been deported and has again entered this country illegally. 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (2000) makes it a felony for an alien who has been deported to thereafter reenter the United States or at anytime thereafter be found in the United States.
Those persons who enter this country illegally are subject to deportation. 8 U.S.C. § 1227 (2000). Deportation may be based upon any number of factors, including the alien’s initial entry into this country contrary to law or acts while in this country, such as the commission of certain crimes. However, while an illegal alien is subject to deportation, that person’s ongoing presence in the United States in and of itself is not a crime [***3] unless that person had been previously deported and regained illegal entry into this country.
Conclusion: Being a DREAMie is not a crime.

Throws a whole new spin on ‘illegal is illegal,’ doesn’t it?

Check the Immigration Law FAQs for more information pertaining to immigration law matters.

Relevant posts

• Being illegal is not a crime
• U.S. Attorney Chris Christie clarifies that ‘illegal immigrants’ are in civic violation

This great empowering video was sent in by the Latino Youth Collective in Indianapolis.

Thank you and leave comments.

and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

It is officially our first birthday soon. And we have certainly come a long way in this one year from being a tiny collective of undocumented students who wanted to take swift and organized action on the DREAM Act to being the national online intermediary of the United We DREAM coalition.

While we work on the DREAM Act 24/7, we shouldn’t lose sight of our families and our personal lives. They play a big role in why we are fighting so hard for legalization options.

I’ll be spending the holidays celebrating my birthday with my family in rural Merced, California.

We want to hear from you. How are you spending the holidays this year?

We’ll be launching a slew of new features in the New Year. Stay warm and stay safe. Recharge your batteries and get reenergized to fight for DREAM in ‘09.

Note: This was not supposed to be emailed out. I suppose ever since the server fixed our email outbound script, everything we post is getting mailed. The problem has been fixed — we only mail out Action Alerts.

A great ‘coming out’ article is up on desicritics.org from one of our student Administrators. We hope it finds its way to more undocumented Desi students and even LGBT students who live in the shadows of society and face a greater stigma in their own community.

Rahman, an undocumented student originally from Bangladesh has noted in conversation with DreamActivist:

I must agree in that our communities do associate illegality with unbridled stigma. There seems to be a greater sense of inferiority and incompleteness than would be in other ethnic groups. Bangladeshis, at least the ones I’ve met in New York, place a lot of emphasis on American citizenship and consider it essential to their own self worth. Consequently, they view the undocumented segment of our community as something lower than humans, a characterization that is incredibly elitist and racist.

We have other Desi undocumented students on this site who have submitted their stories. One of them is Zeenat who is from Pakistan and another is Verve, who actually handles the guest-blogging liaison with Change.org.

The DREAM Act and Comprehensive Immigration Reform is not just an issue of importance to the Latino community in the United States — it affects all immigrant communities. Part of the DreamActivist project is to counter the automatic lumping of immigration issues with ‘Mexicans.’ See our stories — we are from all continents (besides Antarctica) and some islands.

Leave positive comments on the article and disseminate it widely in your own networks.

If you are an undocumented student and would like to share your story, you can email us at admin@dreamactivist.org or use the contact form.

For the less net-savvy: Send in your hand-written stuff to our snail mail address (P.O Box 7552, Ann Arbor, MI 48107-7552) if you don’t ‘do’ e-mail.

Don’t have a few cents to spare on postage? Call our toll-free line (1800-596-7498) that automatically goes to answering machine and leave a short story about your life on our voicemail. We may arrange a nation-wide ‘call in undocumented’ day soon where students call-in for 1-3 minutes to leave their stories.

Rest assured, your personal information would never be shared with anyone.

In an ever globalizing world of McDonalds, international holidays, languages, Facebook/Myspace, the bond of nationality is eroding. And I do not see that as a tragedy. Today, we self-identify in so many ways-I am a homosexual, a woman, a student, an Indian, a tech-geek, a daughter, an atheist, a civil rights activist, an aspiring lawyer, and so much more. If society can accept so many identities without placing teleological components to citizenship, why are the undocumented and documented migrants put to the test? After all, we do not need to be alike in order to co-exist.

She’s here, she’s queer, she’s undocumented - and she’s not apologizing for it. MAGrad has played a pivotal and vital role in the fight towards passage of the DREAM Act in the past couple of years, and has increased awareness of the issues faced by potential Dream beneficiaries many times over, especially the unique issues faced by gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered Dream beneficiaries.

At 24 years old, she’s accomplished more in her lifetime than many 50, 60, and 70 year-olds could ever hope to accomplish (and we are not counting the nativists). She has earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and hopes to continue her education in the field of law to further advocate for those whose voices would otherwise be silenced. She is a beacon of bright light in the shadows that suppress undocumented youth, and her light has thankfully spread far and wide on the blogosphere and touched the lives of many Dreamers and non-Dreamers alike.

Why it’s impossible to feel anything other than an undying love for MAGrad:

*She made a 100% on her US Citizenship Test, something we know many current citizens are unable to do *cough cough*

*She works to erase hate and bigotry in a world overrun with those very things, and she has greatly succeeded to date. To know that you have truly made a difference in the world and tipped the scale towards a more positive environment is a feeling I hope MAGrad experiences every day.

*She’s an L-Word addict, and has turned more than one fellow Dreamer into a fellow L-Word whore

*She is HIGHLY intelligent…enough said.

*She has a “HAWT” accent, but speaks IMPECCABLE English of course.

*Even through all the struggles she’s been through, she still fights for education for children through the Fiji Children’s Trust.

As the pic above attests to, MAGrad was born to be a leader, a role she has filled quiet well indeed. That is why she is the ultimate Dreamer of the Year - a person other Dreamers look up to and respect for who she is and not the papers she lacks.

In closing:

Never underestimate the power of minor acts and inconspicuous actions — They can be the start of something new and powerful and if not, we must acknowledge them for the simple fact that nothing should be lost to history.