In the mid-1980s, my father boarded a plane in Luiz Muñoz Marín International Airport. He was leaving Puerto Rico, his childhood home. His destination was Chicago.
This detail may seem unimportant without context. My father was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, and raised in San Germán. He was one of the first members of my family to move to the continental United States. He, like so many other Puerto Ricans before him, immigrated — but not on foot, not with smugglers and not on a raft. He immigrated on a Boeing 737.
After hopping from military base to military base, he eventually settled down in Baltimore, where I was raised and given every opportunity to attend college.
Not many Latino/a immigrants have the luxury of U.S. citizenship like I do. For those who don’t, a college education may seem more like a privilege than a right.
Last Wednesday, the Student Government Association passed a resolution endorsing the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The DREAM Act allows educational opportunities for undocumented minors who can prove a five-year residence in the United States. During those five years, the minors cannot leave the country for any extended period of time (i.e. any period more than 90 days). The minors must also have a high-school diploma or GED, be of “good moral character” and must have arrived in the United States before age 16.
The act stipulates that minors must either obtain a bachelor’s degree, complete two years of undergraduate education or serve two years in the military. By doing one of the above, they will earn permanent resident status.
The DREAM Act, which was attached as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act along with a resolution to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, set off a slew of debates.
Republicans criticized Democrats for lumping contentious legislation with a defense bill that would allocate $726 billion for defense spending. They were wary of Democrats, who they saw as trolling for Latino/a votes. Surprisingly, the Republicans’ fixation on cultural politics outshone their tendency toward fat checks and military spending. Who would have guessed that denying education to undocumented immigrants would be more important than pay raises for troops?
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, education is a right, not a privilege. The DREAM Act provides these undocumented people with a path to an education and citizenship. By allowing them these opportunities, Congress will soften the development of inequality that is sure to exacerbate if education remains blocked from an increasingly important segment of our population.
Blocking the passage of the DREAM Act only serves to further marginalize Latinos/as whose parents brought them to the United States “illegally.” Ever since Americans became infatuated with the mythic agency of the individual, appeals to structural inequalities have largely fallen on deaf ears or have been warped into conspiracies.
It’s no conspiracy. The blockage of the DREAM Act will undoubtedly force undocumented people to other professions, impede their life chances and stifle the creation of human capital. It’s no question that people with higher levels of education make more money. No matter how good their moral character, without papers they will be unable to attend school. By denying them education, we’ve explicitly created an unequal playing field.
As a Latino who fate happened to smile upon, I couldn’t imagine life without the opportunity for an education. For every undocumented immigrant struggling to achieve a better quality a life through higher education, last Wednesday, the SGA, parts of the university community and I said, “We support you.”
Michael Casiano is a junior English major. He can be reached at casiano at umdbk dot com.
