Senate to Take Up Measure to Help Illegal Immigrant Students

WASHINGTON — With a Senate vote looming, a group of illegal immigrant students asked lawmakers on Wednesday to approve a measure that would give them a path to citizenship if they attended college or joined the military.

The high school and college students, who gave only first names, said at a press conference that they arrived in the United States as small children and are being denied access to their dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers and scientists because they can't qualify for financial aid or get a job after graduation.

"I foresee myself as a doctor helping thousands of families, but without education, without being able to go to medical school, I can't. Therefore, my dreams will die," said Rodrigo, who said he crossed the border illegally with his mother when he was 6 years old and later graduated from a San Jose, Calif. high school as class valedictorian with a 4.0 grade point average.

The legislation is known as the DREAM Act, which stands for "Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act." It was part of a larger immigration overhaul that failed in the Senate earlier this year.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. is planning to bring the DREAM Act to the Senate floor as an amendment to a Pentagon spending bill under debate this week.

The measure would allow illegal immigrant students to eventually attain permanent legal status if they complete two years of college or serve honorably in the military for at least two years. It also would allow them to qualify for in-state college tuition.

The law would apply to illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years before the measure's enactment, have graduated from high school or obtained a GED, and have no criminal record.

Durbin said Tuesday that the measure is a "narrowly tailored, bipartisan measure" that would give a select group of students in America a chance to become legal residents and address "a very serious recruitment crisis facing our military."

He also said that the undocumented children came to the United States through no fault of their own.

"We shouldn't punish children for the mistakes their parents made. That's not the American way," he said.

The measure is sure to face opposition.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a vocal critic of illegal immigration, sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asking him to "put an end to efforts in the Senate to attach any measures to unrelated legislation that would reward illegal aliens with amnesty or allow them increased access to publicly funded benefits."

In addition, Tancredo said that "using a military bill – when we have troops in the field – as a vehicle for trying to sneak these kinds of unpopular measures by the public would be a terrible mistake."

Despite the opposition, proponents said they were optimistic that the measure could pass.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who authored the legislation in the House, said he was hopeful that it would become law.

The children affected by the bill did not make the decision to come to the United States illegally, he said, at the press conference with the students. "The decisions they made were to work hard, honor their families, honor our communities and honor our country."

The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated that the DREAM Act would result in 279,000 newly eligible persons for college enrollment or the military. In addition, 715,000 illegal immigrants between the ages of 5 and 17 would become eligible in the future, according to the research group.

On the Web:

U.S. Senate: www.senate.gov

Migration Policy Institute: www.migrationpolicy.org