December 18, 2010

Lessons Learned: Where the DREAM Act Movement Went Wrong

For those among us who did not watch the C-SPan coverage of the DREAM Act cloture vote this morning, especially those of us on the West Coast who may have had a hard time being up early on a Saturday, the results were a 55-41 vote, with the DREAM Act falling five votes short of success.

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I have been a staunch critic of the DREAM Act, though not of immigration in general. I do believe that maintaining the influx and efflux of people is part of what will pull the United States out of its slump. However, should the DREAM Act come up for a vote again any time soon, there have been some important lessons in this failure:


- Place and time matter.
While it has been in making for about a decade, the DREAM Act was first brought to general awareness when it was inserted into a piece of legislation regarding defense spending, supposedly due to the provision that it would allow undocumented immigrants to use military service as an avenue to citizenship. While there are admittedly a considerable number of 'DREAMers' who would have utilized this option, the pro-DREAM movement itself with its posters graduation caps and gowns and protestors wearing the same during their protests has shown that the major backing of the DREAM Act is within those who wish to use the avenue of postsecondary education. The DREAM Act was pushed into a vote during a lame duck session out of desperation, and as such, as I have long said, was poorly written and planned because of it. It is not a matter of defense spending, and did not belong there. This, I believe, is a large part of what turned the public against it from the get-go.

If the DREAM Act is to come to a vote again, I do not recommend that it come to either house of Congress as a standalone bill. If anything, it should be a small clause contained within a larger piece of legislation to reform immigration, or expand education - because the success of the DREAM Act relies heavily upon those institutions, moreso than it would on the Department of Defense.

- Consistency matters.
Some of the strongest (or at least, the loudest) arguments for the DREAM Act were that they provided for students who were thoroughly American and 'didn't even speak the language' of the countries of their families and would be alienated if they were to be sent back there. Another argument widely utilized in the DREAM campaign was that it did not apply solely to Hispanic immigrants. Both of these messages were severly undermined by the fact that the only other language in which there was a considerably publicized pro-DREAM campaign was in Spanish. It is not in question that the DREAM Act would apply to other ethnic groups - but the pro-DREAM campaign did not make any other ethnic group the face of its cause.

- Skepticism is king.The greatest tool of the pro-DREAM is utilizing the stories of 'DREAMers' who are valedictorians and future entrepreneurs, who are excellent students and socially conscious citizens. However, for all these hundreds of name who were brought up for their excellence, the public long recognized that there would be thousands if not hundreds-of-thousands of 'DREAMers' who, if successful at all, would be successful in average ways. Most 'DREAMers' would be successful in that they were able to work stable and dignified occupations and provide for their families, not in becoming the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The pro-DREAM movement would have been smart to use the possible contributions of the majority of would-be DREAMers in living average but successful lives as the power behind their movement. The DREAM Movement forgot the value of the average American. These, too, are valuable contributions and indeed are the contributions that citizens make with their success. Portraying DREAMers in this way instead of collectively as valedictorians and entrepreneurs would have been more conducive to the message of equality that they were attempting to convey.

That being said, my heart goes out to those who had and still have their hopes set on what the DREAM Act had promised. I hope this pitfall gives the movement time to consider the many areas in which it could be improved, and I hope to one day be able to stand with you and support your cause. This time fell short, but the beauty of our system is that there is still the opportunity to improve what needs to be improved and try again.

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