MALDEF’s president, general counsel respond to Senate vote on DREAM Act

The Dream Act didn’t make it past the Senate.

This is the legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented children brought here by their parents.

I know many of these kids, one in particular who recently graduated from Texas A&M  with a dergree in Engineering and Applied Mathematics. The kid is extremely talented, grew up in San Antonio, is culturally an American kid, no different than any other “red-blooded” American kid. And yet his future is in peril through no fault of his own. What’s more, out nation is cheated out of the talents of this amazing kid because of his immigration status.

This story is repeated thousands of times throughout the US, and today nothing was done to correct that situation.

The politics of the way it was introduced, as a rider to a defense appropriations bill, will be fodder for talk, then the talk will die out. But this issue is not going to disappear.

Some claim that the issue was used as a ploy to attract votes. The problem with this idea is that the accusation fits both sides of our tired political divide. It fits for Republicans accusing Democrats and vice-versa.

I’ll leave you with this: a statement from Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Today, a substantial majority of the United States Senate supported a procedural measure that would have permitted Majority Leader Harry Reid to move forward in adding the DREAM Act to the defense authorization bill; this would have paved the way for enactment this year of this critically important piece of legislation. Unfortunately, because Senate rules currently require a super-majority to proceed with conducting the nation’s important business, the procedural vote failed.

“MALDEF views today’s vote as a temporary setback for a bill that has had bipartisan support for many years, that would address in part our critical national need for more skilled and educated workers, and that would vindicate our foundational national value to evaluate young people on their own merits rather than on the acts or decisions of their parents. We hope that in the very near future the Senate will put partisan politics aside and have the courage to support the DREAM Act as an appropriate recognition of our country’s right to benefit from the efforts of American-raised and educated scholars and patriots.”