DREAM Act Essay

Immigration and naturalization have been a huge discussion and concern among the Latino community since the three big Latino group: Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Mexican came to the United States of America. For Latino to be naturalized is to be an American and have a citizenship status in the United States. To become a U.S. citizen has always been a hard pathway so to ease the Latino access to naturalization, Congress made a proposal in 2001 that aims at undocumented immigrants youths. The proposal is DREAM Act which stands for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act. DREAM Act is a proposal to allow undocumented youths to become temporary U.S. residents through a rigorous process then they can continue the legal citizenship process. DREAM Act is helpful and impactful to many Latino individuals to become U.S. citizens in a timely manner therefore it is important that we understand the eligibility and the reason why it got vetoed. DREAM Act was a bipartisan proposal made by Congress because it was giving immigrant youth an opportunity for a higher education in U.S. and help the United States with the economy and military said the American Immigration Council. Furthermore, the American Immigration Council said the DREAM Act was believed to “keep the talented students in the USA” therefore those students will help improve the economy with their knowledge. These positive outcomes are very genuine, but to become a dreamer (applicant of DREAM Act), there are six requirements that an individual must fulfill. The individual must have migrated to the U.S. under the age of 16 years old, lived in the United States for at least 5 years, must graduated with a U.S. high school diploma or received a GED, have good moral character, did not commit any crime, and during the process of becoming a legal permanent resident the individual must be between the age of twelve to their early 30s (The White House). After meeting all the requirement, the person must attend college or serve in the U.S. military then will go through a background check to see if they are eligible for being a legal permanent resident (The White House). If the person fails, they will be deported (The White House). Even though the way to become a citizen under the DREAM Act will take a lot of years, many Latino are determined and support this bill. Several Latino community support DREAM Act because 5-10 percent of undocumented high school graduates do not attend college due to the high out-of-state costs (Anti-Defamation League). …show more content…
With the DREAM Act, the dreamer will receive federal assistance on loans and work-study. Even more, it guarantee the Latino community more chances of becoming citizen. According to Pew Research Center in 2011, ninety-one percent of Latino support the DREAM Act; and to cut down in details, the DREAM Act has the support of eighty-seven percent of native-born Latino and ninety-four percent of foreign-born Latinos from an amount of 1,220 Latino participants in the survey. The survey is showing strong signs that Latino support the DREAM Act which means it will an impact to their community. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act was vetoed from the Senate and House of Representatives. The DREAM Act have different bill names under each legislation. For the Senate, the bill was named S.952 and under the House of Representative, it is H.R. 1842