Durbin’s DREAM Act stalls in Senate on test vote
October 24th, 2007 12:51 pm by DJ DanielsonA cloture motion to proceed with the DREAM Act in the Senate failed today on a vote of 52-44. 60 affirmative votes were required to continue.
The DREAM Act, championed by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, would give a path to citizenship those undocumented immigrants who came to the US as minors, have attained a high school diploma or GED and intend to begin college or join the military.
The opposition to this and similar bills remains deeply rooted in ideology and excuses. They want immigration reform, yet it seems unless it’s a 500 ft. high fence on the boarder it’s not worthy of consideration.
Marisa Trevino at the Huffington Post looks at some consequences of such rigid opposition:
These students are graduating as bilingual teachers, nurses, engineers, business administrators — the list goes on.
Yet, this country would rather slap these young people in the face by not acknowledging the fact that these students, who may not be native-born but are “home-grown,” have a ready command, in most cases, of two languages and an intimate knowledge of the history, the traditions, the culture/pop culture and the issues of this country.
The further insult is that school districts facing a shortage of bilingual teachers are bypassing our own qualified graduates, albeit undocumented, to import teachers from Mexico, Spain and other South American countries to teach in a school system that they are unfamiliar with and where they should be role models in modeling both English and Spanish to their bilingual students, inevitably need to either learn English themselves or are naturally stronger in Spanish.
Hospitals are bypassing qualified nursing school graduates who are bilingual to recruit nurses from such countries as the Phillipines. Nurses who must learn U.S. routines and patient care that is unique to this country.
But because our graduates who are undocumented cannot legally work, they must stand idly by and watch their rightful jobs go to people who have a steep learning curve when it comes to knowing the culture and people of the United States.
With such unreasonable reactions from folks such as Tom Tancredo to the proposition of even listening to undocumented students and their stories, it’s no wonder this type of legislation isn’t advancing and immigration policy will remain exactly as it is and everyone will remain unhappy.
Dick Day hanging out with minutemen will surely get us somewhere, though.
Both of Minnesota’s Senators, Norm Coleman, R, and Amy Klobuchar, D, voted for the measure.