Immigrant Students Deserve a DREAM Act With Community Service Provisions

On Thursday, I spent part of my afternoon covering the latest intervention in the "official" Boston Veterans Day Parade by the Veterans for Peace. While I waited for them to appear behind the main parade, as has become their annual custom, I decided to shoot photographs of the some of the participating organizations. After a while, I noted that rank after rank of marchers were Junior ROTC members at several Boston high schools. Hundreds of kids in military uniforms. "OK," I thought, "Why don't I get closer in so OMB viewers can see some faces in the crowd in my pictures?" So I moved into the middle of Tremont St. - cursing the fact that the bright fall sun was streaming down on the backs of my subjects - and started to look more carefully at the faces of the young people passing in front of me. And then I noticed that many of the students were African-American, Latino and Asian. Easily a majority. OK, no big shock, this being Boston. Who else joins JROTC and then ROTC in public schools in a major urban area these days? Many of the white kids go to private high schools if their parents can afford it. To ensure - so their parents will say if asked - that they get a "better" education. (Perish the thought that said parents might really be after ... shall we say ... a whitereducation for their kids ... but that's a discussion for another day.) And most of those white kids are citizens. And a fair percentage will have or acquire the social capital (and capital capital) to get through college and get a decent job. While students of color still have less opportunity to do the same on average.

In any case, it quickly became clear to me that I was seeing the latest victims of the "poverty draft" marching to their inevitable fate as cannon fodder in the next series of imperial adventures that America will doubtless pursue in the coming years. Almost immediately it also became clear that many of the marchers were likely recent immigrants. And that the military still seems like a reasonable route out of poverty and into college to many kids from impoverished immigrant families.

As I mulled that over, my thoughts turned to the movement of undocumented students and allies to pass the DREAM Act - which would offer a path to citizenship for some undocumented young people who were brought here by their parents, grew up here, went to high school here, and then find themselves unable to get public financial aid or scholarships for college in the absence of a green card or citizenship.

A worthy enough goal, if more limited than the general amnesty the immigrant movement used to fight for just a few years back.

Yet here I found myself stuck. I support amnesty for all immigrants, and I certainly support everybody that's already here getting a path to citizenship in addition to the establishment of a rational federal immigration policy that will also give all future immigrants a similar path.

So, why do DREAM Act partisans feel it's necessary to go along with the parts of the bill that push undocumented students into the military as the only form of national service acceptable as a path to citizenship?

This is, after all, the same military that has routinely laid waste to the very countries they came from - directly or indirectly (Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia spring immediately to mind ... as do Iraq and Afghanistan) - in the service of the caprices of American-based multi-national corporations and the US foreign policy they buy for themselves year after year.

Is that really what DREAM activists want? Earlier versions of the bill contained provisions for alternative (and non-violent) national service on the road to citizenship. What happened to those provisions? Why have conservatives in Congress been allowed to run roughshod on such a no-brainer of a bill? With a Democratic majority, why couldn't the Obama administration get a win on a broad immigration reform law? Why did Democrats join Republicans in whittling down the existing bill? And why did immigrant activist leaders cave on this critical issue?

Sure, undocumented students still have the option of going to college to get legal status under the current DREAM Act language, but without the ability to get public financial aid how many of them can afford to do that? Damned few. So the current DREAM Act if passed would simply be an infernal machine to shove undocumented students into the military as their sole path to citizenship. Whether they want that or not.

I feel sanguine that local DREAM activists like the Student Immigrant Movement don't agree with this modified DREAM Act. So why do they believe they must wave the flag at rallies lately and feature speeches on the desire of some in their ranks to join the military? Rather than stand on the solid principle that no human being is "illegal" and that America needs a rational and just immigration policy?

Obviously if some undocumented immigrants really want to join the (fortunately still) all-volunteer military that is their right - and some would say privilege - in a democratic society. I understand that. And I respect their decision in that case. I mean, hell, one of my grandfathers got his citizenship in precisely that way. He joined the Army and went to France to fight in World War I. Still one of the most pointless and bloody wars on record. He was in the Battle of Verdun. Survived. And returned home a citizen.

On the other hand, one of my great-uncles was killed in action in World War I.

That's why there's a Pramas Square in Peabody, MA.

So am I supposed to think that joining the military is a great path to citizenship?

No, I do not, and I cannot agree with such a sentiment.

Open Media Boston therefore joins the American Friends Service Committee and other anti-war organizations in calling for the following changes to the DREAM Act prior to its passage

1. The DREAM Act must include language that provides both a robust civilian community service path and a solid vocational path to legalization.
2. The DREAM Act must offer access for undocumented students to federal financial aid for college including loans and grants.
3. The DREAM Act must include provisions that assure the protection of legal status for youth, who for reasons of conscience object to war and are no longer able to serve in the armed forces.

And I'd be really pleased if Boston area immigrant advocacy organizations like the Student Immigrant Movement joined OMB in this stance.

Because what's the point in passing a DREAM Act that could easily become a nightmare for thousands of immigrant students and their families if its current language is allowed to stand unmodified?

Holler back, everyone, if you've got something to say on this matter.

p.s. - here's an online petition you can sign if you agree with me ...

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston