By Melissa Martinez
News Editor
The Dream is Now Campaign, following the hopes of The DREAM Act, is currently holding a contest through April 5 to encourage students throughout the country to sign an online petition and submit art (videos, songs, drawings and poems) displaying their support for The DREAM Act.
The bipartisan legislation, originally developed by Sen. Orrin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] aims to allow undocumented students to be eligible to complete their college degree or two years of military service in providing them a 6-year-long conditional path to citizenship, according to dreamact.info.
The Dream is Now campaign is targeting college students for outreach in the hopes of spreading the word throughout campuses and advocating for reform.
The contest is to win a chance at screening the Dream is Now documentary on the campus of their college or University. The students who gain the most signatures from their college or university will also receive an all expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. to watch the premiere of the documentary.
TheDreamIsNow.org was originally created by Laurene Powell Jobs—widow of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs—and filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for Superman”). The Dream is Now aims to allow “DREAMers” to convey their experiences through video in effort to offer personal testimonies of the impact of being an undocumented student as well as a chance for people who are documented to display their support.
TheDreamIsNow.org highlights a student named Terrence attending UC Berkeley, majoring in mathematics and applied statistics who has recently been accepted to the Masters Program for biostatistics at Yale University. Terrance breaks down the numbers in dollars of how much it would cost to deport him and other undocumented students ($23,000 for every person) and how much the economy will gain if undocumented students were given an opportunity to complete college and receive their citizenship if The DREAM Act is passed. According to Terrence’s video, he is one of 2.1 million youths in America brought to the U.S. as a young child.
“On top of that [the estimated $23,000 per person it would cost to deport undocumented citizens], we stand to lose an estimated $329 billion by 2030 by denying them the chance to become taxpaying citizens and economic innovators. We can’t afford to waste their talents,” stated the TheDreamIsNow.org website.
Opposition to the DREAM Act references the hidden costs of the program, the lack of restriction and the lack of holding participants to standards.
“I think it’s a back-door amnesty and I’m not in favor of it,” former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said.
The Dream is Now campaign is currently partnered with associations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Teach for America, as well as Bill Clinton. The DREAM Act is currently supported by both Republican and Democrats — even though both parties disagree over the issue of immigration reform.
In December 2010, The DREAM Act passed in the House but only received 55 votes in the Senate. To avert a filibuster, 60 votes are required from the Senate.
To learn more visit TheDreamIsNow.org.