Congressman Polis on The Dream Act

This speach touches on an issue that often gets overlooked in the debate about immigration reform: the issue of young adults who were brought illegally to the US as children. Should these people be allowed to stay and become legal? By coincidence I have met two unrelated people who came to the US illegally as children. One young woman was around 13 when her aging, ill father sent her to the US to live with her Aunt and Uncle. She crossed the US-Mexican border led by a coyote, and just went thorugh that whole terrible ordeal. After graduating high school, she tried to get legal status, but was denied, and went home to Central America to wait 10 years and then apply to return to the US legally. Meanwhile, this girl who graduated at the top of her class, could be going on to college. Another young man I met came to the US illegally with his parents when he was a child. We worked together, but he got fired for using a false social security number. He now works in construction and gets paid under-the-table. While we worked together he often had difficulty getting to work because he couldn't get a driver's license.

Regardless of how people feel about illegal immigration, I think that the situation of these young people should really be looked at from a more compassionate understanding. Like Polis said, these young people are often just as American as anyone else, and they have a lot to offer our country. How are Americans at all benefiting from the loss of that young woman's bright mind, or the fact that this young man must work under-the-table? Hopefully the Dream Act will get passed, althogh I disagree about the requirement that they must go to college in order to receive legal status. That is obviously not going to be feasible for many of them; and besides, there are other ways to contribute to society besides going to college. It seems like classism to me.