DREAM deferred

Ironically, the same day and just a few miles away from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s Arkansas Advisory Committee biannual meeting, the Arkansas Senate Education Committee voted to table the DREAM Act (Senate Bill 915), which would allow the children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at state colleges.

The bill was amended to read, “Each publicly supported post-secondary institution shall have the authority to determine its own criteria for admission to its institution at the in-state tuition rate.” While nearby states like Texas have their own DREAM Acts, Arkansas lawmakers’ opposition to a DREAM Act was never argued last Wednesday. Only testimony favoring the DREAM Act was heard.

Unfortunately, with no discussion from the opposition, and thus no opportunity for discussion or for observers to understand reasons behind the votes, multiple committee members voted no and the bill failed. If open debate is necessary for negotiation and compromise in our democracy, we received none of that in this hearing.

Let’s start by saying that immigration is a complex issue. Middle-class folks like us generally gain from immigration in many and varied ways, from great ethnic food to diverse perspectives and ideas. And immigration has been very good for business, enabling labor-intensive industries like meatpacking to continue to thrive onshore rather than mechanizing or moving offshore. This has kept our economy thriving and increased the value of stocks owned mainly by middle-class folks like us.

But for blue-collar America, this form of globalization offers a mixed picture, with new immigrants competing for jobs in areas like construction, and by starting new small businesses. The complexities of immigration make it understandable why some Arkansans might question seemingly pro-economic development, pro-education and pro-immigrant legislation like the DREAM Act-understandable, but still not right.

First, while it’s true that undocumented immigrants did break thelaw to come here, our own governments on all levels never enforced the laws for the past two decades. As conservative evangelical Richard Land puts it, it’s as if state troopers allowed someone to speed on a stretch of highway for 20 years, and then enforced a $20,000 ticket to make up for lost time.

And it’s not as if illegal immigration is a new thing. More than a century ago, our grandparents arrived here from Sicily and Mexico “without papers.” We would not be here today educating our country’s students and their teachers had it not been for their vision of the American Dream.

More important, DREAM Act proposals are not about the actions of immigrants, but about the future of their kids, most of whom act and think of themselves as Americans. If we don’t allow those kids, who have the talent and ambition, to climb their way through college and up the ladder, we will bea lesser country for it.

With only a fifth of all Arkansans holding a bachelor’s degree or better, why deny some high school graduates the opportunity to pursue higher education at the same affordable tuition rate as their classmates? Why would we impede the development of a highly skilled work force which we direly need for growth?

And anyway, immigrants of all kinds, undocumented and legitimate, pay taxes. It doesn’t seem right for them and their kids not to get the benefits of those taxes.

Maybe our government should have enforced a different immigration policy over the past 20 years, but it didn’t. Given the facts on the ground, a DREAM Act and similar policies recognizing that the children of immigrants are Americans is both economically and morally the best way to go.

Anything less would make us less than who we are.

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Robert Maranto, Diana Gonzales Worthen and Gary Ritter teach at the University of Arkansas, and serve on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s Arkansas Advisory Committee. The opinions expressed here are theirs alone.