Dayton Miami Valley AFL-CIO

Our nation cannot afford to lose the productivity of thousands of undocumented immigrant students, a coalition of union, student and civil rights leaders said today. A day after a massive march in Washington, D.C., for comprehensive immigration reform, the leaders called on Congress to fix the nation’s broken immigration system by passing real reform legislation, including the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.    

At a morning press conference, sponsored by the United States Student Association (USSA), student leaders were joined by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union and community leaders. More than 600 USSA members are in town for their legislative conference this week and will visit Capitol Hill to lobby for immigration reform. USSA President Gregory Cendana said:

The DREAM Act will provide some of the hardest working students with the life-changing opportunity to attend college and better their lives as well as their communities. We must now push forward to achieve comprehensive immigration reform and extend opportunity to the next generation of leaders.  

The DREAM Act would give conditional legal status and eventual citizenship to undocumented students who graduate from U.S. high schools, are of good moral character, arrived in the United States as minors and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment.

Tom Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), said the DREAM Act is about harnessing the brain power for the future growth of the country.

But it is as close to a no-brainer as you can get. The immigration system doesn’t follow our constitutional values or serve our national interest. The DREAM Act does both.

Fabiola is an example of the students who desperately need the DREAM Act. (We are not using her full name to prevent her from being identified and possibly deported.) She was only two years old when her father brought her to the United States 22 years ago seeking a better life. Fifteen years ago, her father became a U.S. citizen and all her younger siblings who were born here also are citizens. But Fabiola fell through the legal cracks and is now too old to become a citizen under current immigration law.

But that has not stopped her from working hard to live the American Dream. Last week, she graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a degree in international development. But she cannot find a job in her field because she is undocumented. She says:

I am a product of a broken immigration system. Part of the American Dream is working hard. I don’t mind that part, but I would just like to see results like everybody else. 

In contrast, Adey Fisseha became a citizen a week before graduating from Harvard. Now campaign coordinator for the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), Fisseha said her family fled Ethiopia because her father, a trade unionist, was being persecuted. The family braved the hot sun, attacks by the military and other hardships to finally reach a refugee camp in neighboring Sudan. They eventually made their way to the United States, where they sought a better life. Fisseha’s father now works at the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center.

The nation cannot afford to lose students like these, Trumka told the press conference.

Each year approximately 65,000 undocumented immigrant students graduate from U.S. high schools, often despite economic hardship and language barriers. Unless there is a change in immigration law, these capable and hard-working young people will be relegated to a life in the shadows, unable to achieve their full potential—and that’s an outcome our nation can no longer afford.

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Antonia Cortese agreed, telling reporters:

the students have done everything we ask students to do. They studied hard and worked hard and they deserve a chance to succeed.

National Education Association (NEA) Vice President Lily Eskelsen said:

Do you know what it means to me and to teachers all over the country to see these amazing students here today, telling us they get it? They’re saying: We’re not a charity. We’re working hard. But tell us that diploma will take us somewhere.

Trumka emphasized that the DREAM Act is a part of a broader immigration reform. The union movement’s unity framework for comprehensive immigration reform includes five interconnected initiatives. The plan calls for:

• Adjustment of status for currently undocumented immigrants;
• An independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need;
• A secure and effective worker authorization mechanism;
• Rational operational control of the border;
• Improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent jobs.  

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