New York Dreamers Begin Hunger Strike As State Budget Deadline Looms
*The important sentence in this article, after you cut through Gov. Cuomo’s desire for a compromise that won’t happen, is this one, by NY councilwoman Ydanis Rodriguez: “Who’s making the decision not to give the extra few thousand dollars to make these people into the architects, engineers and doctors that New York deserves?” Rodriguez asked. “They will be ready to pay more taxes, they will join the middle class, and they won’t depend on social services because we invested in them.” VL
By Roque Planas, Huffington Post Latino Voices
NEW YORK — A group of 10 undocumented youths launched a hunger strike Wednesday, vowing to pressure New York lawmakers to put funding for a proposed state version of the Dream Act back into next year’s budget.
Immigrant rights advocates and Hispanic politicians in New York have for years pressed for a state Dream Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for state financial aid for college. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) dashed their hopes Tuesday, when he said funding for the state Dream Act would be dropped from his budget proposal after he failed to cobble together a compromise tying the Dream Act to an education tax credit backed by Republicans.
Cuomo called it “pointless” to include the Dream Act in the budget if the proposed compromise wasn’t likely to secure enough support among either Democrats, who largely oppose the tax credit, or Republicans, who largely oppose the Dream Act.
But dozens of immigrant rights activists made clear they hold Cuomo responsible for the failure at a rally in downtown Manhattan to announce the hunger strike.
“We want politicians to take our lives seriously,” Denise Vivar, 20, an undocumented political science student at Lehman College, told The Huffington Post.
For Monica Sibri, 22, joining the hunger strike was personal. Without legal immigration status, and the access to state and federal student aid that comes with it, Sibri worked side jobs as a babysitter and in a pharmacy and pooled family money with her sister in order to pay for college. Having won only a single scholarship, she said that if the New York Dream Act fails to pass, she and her sister won’t have enough money for both to attend college in the fall.
“At this point, it’s either she goes to school or I go to school,” Sibri told HuffPost.
A few steps from the rally, a handful of counter-protesters trumpeted their opposition to the state Dream Act.
“I think it’s outrageous for people who aren’t even in the country legally to demand subsidized college loans and displace from …
This article was originally published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.
[Photo by Roque Planas, Huffington Post Latino Voices]