The DREAM Act is something that I have been thinking about a lot, after first hearing about it pre-news hype. While I feel that anything that encourages pursuing an education is a step in the right direction, I have come to the conclusion that the DREAM Act is not what we need.
In essence, the DREAM Act will allow undocumented immigrants the ability to pursue an education or military service as an avenue towards citizenship. The highly politicized name in and of itself makes me feel wary - while the intentions are admirable, the manipulative aspect of the name makes me cringe. It automatically wants to attribute stigma to anyone who disagrees with it:
"You're against the DREAM Act?"
"You want to kill the DREAM?!"
It's a little bit hypocritical to tout adages about freedom and equality, and at the same time try to stigmatize anyone who disgrees with you.
I also think the wording of the legislation itself is somewhat vague, and leaves a lot of room for corruption in its enforcement. There's a lot of room for paperwork to be lost or unaccounted for. Even if the intention is right, enforcing the DREAM Act could get messy, because something like this is unprecendented, and leaving it up to the states instead of creating federal regulation does not seem to be realistic.
My biggest peeve with the legislation, however, is the fact that while the United States does need to improve its educational system, there is something about the DREAM Act that our economy does not need: further concentrating the population of individuals with postsecondary education within the United States.
I don't think that it has evaded anyone's notice that the American economy and job market are going through a low point - and a great deal of this is due to the outsourcing of menial labor and manufacturing jobs to less developed nations where the labor can be contracted for cheap. Meanwhile, "underemployment" is becoming widespread in the United States, a circumstance which requires educated individuals to take jobs that require less than their education level in order to have jobs at all.
Allowing more people to be educated in the United States and to stay here will only exacerbate this conditon - more educated individuals becomind citizens and staying in the United States means more people competing for jobs which are already few and far between. Passage of the DREAM Act will discourage immigrants from pursuing an education in their home countries and these countries, especially in the developing world, will continue to be looked to as simply sources of cheap labor.
What is needed for a worldwide economic recovery is a worldwide effort to improve educational standards, not merely shepherding all of the educated individuals into the United States. If the Asian nations where American companies outsource the majority of their labor were to transition to countries in which more individuals were more educated, that labor would not be as cheap, and those jobs could be brought back to the United States. Concentrating postsecondary degrees in the United States as the DREAM Act would do, however, would have the opposite effect.
While I recognize that the DREAM Act is a valuable contribution to the people to whom it applies, I also feel that it only puts a bandaid over the problem the world economy faces. If we want to keep up this system of having a global economy, we have to think on a global scale.
1 comment:
First, I'd like to say that I am in favor the DREAM Act, but also I recognize that it has many loopholes. While some opponents of the bill share my opinion that the essence of the Dream Act is right and has merit, others do believe it is bad as a whole and just want to kill it.
But what I want to point out to you, and that is my main point, is the fact that immigrants in America, with higher education, are more likely to become entrepreneurs creating jobs rather than taking them. It is widely known in the entrepreneurial world that immigrants start a disproportionately higher number of businesses in the U.S. Also, many businesses created in the last decade have at least one immigrant as a key founder, while in the Silicon Valley that number is more than half. And just for the record, I personally know a DREAMer, who has a viable multimillion dollar business plan for a bioenergy project in the state of Florida, but lacks the resources and papers to put it in place.
One last thing. It is my humble opinion that your idea of the developing world does not match reality. Their corrupt governments do not want a lot of educated people, as a means to consolidate power.
This is a website of a one of the world's best entrepreneurial foundation, which backs up the facts I pointed out:
http://www.entrepreneurship.org/en/Policy-Forum/Topics/Immigration.aspx
This is a very interesting video of a DREAMer, whose family had four businesses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK-_uiuyH0o
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