Undocumented have high hopes for DREAM Act

Undocumented students monitored the Congressional debate on the DREAM Act on a screen at Miami Dade College.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

A cluster of undocumented students cheered South Florida lawmakers, such as Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, when they rose in Congress on Wednesday night to speak in favor of the DREAM Act and loudly booed when opponents spoke against the bill.

The contrasting reactions in Miami maked the start of historic Congressional debate on the bill, first introduced almost 10 years ago, that would legalize hundreds of thousands of undocumented students brought illegally into the country by their parents when they were children.

While the House of Representatives passed the bill 216-198 late Wednesday, the Senate is widely expected to reject it -- which would probably doom the proposal in the lame-duck Congress and perhaps shut the door to broader immigration reform for years to come.

Republican control of the House and a larger number of Republicans in the Senate in the next Congress ensures that legalization of undocumented immigrants is unlikely to garner enough votes.

The undocumented students who followed the debate Wednesday night on a giant TV screen at the Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade College realized that the House vote was perhaps only half the struggle, but they were hopeful and optimistic that the Senate would overcome Republican opposition.

``It was a relief that some Republicans actually do support the bill,'' said 19-year-old Stephanie Wall of Colombia, referring to Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen.

``It actually made me proud to be here in Florida because they are from here and I hope that they were able to move their colleagues.''

Wall, who arrived with her parents when she was 4 years old, added that she realizes that the bill faced an uphill battle in the Senate on Thursday but hoped that a House vote in favor of the DREAM Act would change some minds in the Senate.

``I feel hopeful that something will happen,'' said Wall.

Vanessa Nuñez, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, also expressed hope that ultimately the DREAM Act would prevail, but she also voiced anger at some of the arguments made by opponents.

``What they said was somewhat scary and aggravating,'' said Nuñez. ``Some of the comments that these Republicans in the Senate had were meant to put us down.

``They were saying we were criminals when we really are not. And they were just a whole bunch of lies.''

One of the most militant opponents during initial Senate debate on a cloture rule was Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, who warned that the bill was an amnesty for ``illegal aliens'' that would open the door to more undocumented immigrants in the future.

source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/08/1964543/foreign-born-students-follow-dream.html