Type: Argumentative Essays
Sample donated: Holly Rowe
Last updated: March 22, 2019
The contentious debate over the Dream Act Movement in the U.S. is examined from a liberal perspective, focusing on three major types: identity, power, and rights. This paper will analyze the importance of the DREAMERS that have played a vital role in the United States economy.
Following, the advocacy of undocumented youth to realize the passage of the Development, Relief, and education for Alien Minors (DREAMER) Act, limited by a bipartisan legislation that would entitle undocumented youth a pathway to citizenship. Using the Latino/Hispanic race framework to emphases socio-political surround the immigrant debate. Moreover, the ways undocumented youth announce their identity and agency and the ways they fabricate their demands publicly in the inquiring passage of the DREAM Act during the years 2001 to 2010. To this extent, they should not be treated as illegal or underserving individuals. All of them are competent and well-qualified students who pay taxes and contribute to America well-being. So over, the DREAM Act can become a vital possibility for these students and for their immigrant parents who claim for their U.
S citizenship. On June 2012, the Obama administration stated that it would allow undocumented youth meeting certain eligibility criteria to apply for protection against deportation and in many cases, a work permit under D.A.C.
A. Although, it is a temporary measure with no direction to citizenship. This announcement brought a major victory for the immigrant youth movement, which has worked for decades to achieve some sort of legal status for its undocumented members. In particular, this movement has struggled for the transition of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act. While it has yet to become law, the DREAM Act has played an unparalleled role in U.S. political discourse since it was first proposed in 2001. Above all, it has assembled a new youth movement that asserts its members’ rights the new terms articulating in society are “undocumented youth” and “DREAMERS” which are widely used on college campuses, workplace, in mainstream newspapers, publications, and including by politicians and celebrities.
Many of these immigrant youth movements have taken their stigmatized undocumented status into a powerful identity. As a result, “DREAMERS,” undocumented immigrants in their teens, twenties, and thirties who have revealed their undocumented status in support of the DREAM Act and have become a recognizable and compelling force in the United States; despite having no formal political power.It is very genuine and precise how the immigrant youth movement and DREAMER identity for practical, historical and theoretical reasons have changed over time. Social movements are an especially interesting ground of meaning-making decisions because they are actively and continually producing culture, knowledge, and strategies that challenge particular opposition and interrelated ideas and ideologies (Kurzman, 2008). As a movement speaks for a relatively small population with a stigmatized cumulative identity and limited access to institutionalized political power. Furthermore, the construction self-identifying has to invert dominant stereotypes that have proven to be an important strategy in efforts to passage the DREAM Act. The term “DREAMER” can be accepted an identity, representing a challenge to stigmatization and “illegality” on personal and rhetorical levels.
No piece of legislation that social movements are aware considered of primary leadership and modify undocumented residents. This identity and this movement have not only been able to confound dominant narratives about undocumented immigration, but also bring together unlikely allies to support reforms of U.S immigration laws.Also, it was brought another Assembly Bill 540 (AB 540) that passed by the California legislature in 2001 and allowed all residents of California, regardless of immigration status, to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.
The AB 540 Bill was not only a big step forward and accessible access to attend college for undocumented youth and the U. S-citizen children of undocumented parents, but also empowered undocumented students by combating stigmatization. But it also validated students by constructing a position that reinforced their claims to higher education and upward mobility. The term “AB 540 students,” the name given to the California youth who would benefit from the ruling, was a neutral label, and as most Californians did not know what it meant, it did not immediately reveal one’s immigration status.
More importantly, it emphasized that these young people were dedicated students who had rights under United States law, directly countering discourses of “illegality.” Furthermore, Social movements have worked so hard to accomplish confidence among the DREAMERS. Organization and assertiveness of California’s undocumented youth movement are moving away from justifying access to rights by measuring worthiness according to the nation- state’s norms and towards articulating rights based on the needs of the undocumented society, their ties to the community and family, and their mental health The label “AB 540 students” and “DREAMER” play a productive role that provides an alternative classification to a stigmatized population that connotes ambition, idealism and promise, which inverts and battle negative stereotypes of unauthorized immigrants. Most activists embrace a much broader, more inclusive definition. However, certain activities and events that connect social movements, for example, civil disobedience, large rallies, enlistment, and collective decision making are just few approaches to maximize rights. These young people had experienced involvement through these events and have gained knowledge of what it is to fight for their right in order to preserve their identity. In other words, there is an increasing awareness that advocates and communicates the right that remain within, social movements also recognize who gets left out, marginalized, criminalized and deported. To be aware of the undocumented community is the central key to get organize, being accountable to, and for whom they mobilize.
For example, in the article titled, “Disrupting the dream: Undocumented youth reframe citizenship and deportability through anti-deportation activism,” discusses that one of the activists lived his own experienced through deportation process, he stated “Even when it’s someone you don’t know, and they get arrested and put in deportation, I have to be on it. I say, this is basically my brother, this is part of my community.” This is the responsibility that every immigrant must feel for their own people and fight together for one reason they both depend on. These condition that the immigrants including their children even if they were born in the U.S, they are not absented of rejection, racism, limited access to public health weakening their power.In addition, undocumented youth have found alternative ways to share their experiences, and strategies to increase visibility, equality, and rights as they engage in decision making, organizing, and becoming more civically engaged than the social movement itself.
Surprisingly, the university administrators and national advocacy groups are playing a critical part in the intermediate development of the immigrant youth movement. As DREAMERS have become more organized, associated, they know they need to take further control over their journey. There was a time where the movement became increasingly discouraged with the lawmakers during the argument over C.I.R- Comprehensive Immigration Reform- in 2010. A few DREAMERS, for instance, they felt no well represented by the established organization, which they were led by non-immigrant and exposed to bureaucracy and political limitations that prevent them from being good candidates. On the other hand, professionalism is often lack of devotion and determination. Following, the students felt marginalized and kicked out of the proper decision-making process and left out with a greater coalition.
The immigrant youth movement considers that the Dream Act should be taken separately from C.I.R for the prospect of these immigrant youths. All the events organized by the movement support for the DREAM Act, including personal stories or the advocacy of being a DREAMER have made greater impact thought out the last years. These DREAMERS have great support in New York, California, Chicago, and so on.
There was a rally that took place in New York City in 2010, for example, the DREAMERs not only exposed their personal stories with the media but also held an enormous banner affirming, “We are the American Dream” as well as massive notes like, “Let Us Serve.” Following, with endless miles walking, the fundamental purpose of these events was sharing stories with other individuals, students, and the media and also to lawmakers. This kind of events is the aim of empowering other undocumented young people and take a secret that has limited their movement and power, and by announcing it to the world and transforming their identity into a source of power and personal strength. Not for being left out, they stress not only because of their academic achievement, but also the fact that they were primarily raised in the U.S, similar to their peers and the local community. At first glance, this argument seems to be argumentative for the regimes implemented to the immigrants. Indeed, this is the way some conservative supporters see the Dream Act.
Nevertheless, those that are involved in the movement have been the most vocal and effective for C.I.R. Even though, it remains controversial for some DREAMERS who thinks it could be a bargain. Not to mention, there have been youth activists that have also protested against the SB 1070 in Arizona, a federal enforcement policy like deportation. At LACMA, The Museum of the Stick is a great example of this lively movement in the United States which the Hispanic society is in.
This art embodies Latin American Culture in every aspect. Every object that is displayed represents laboring, hunting and gathering, sports, and worshiping idols. However, all these sources of antique industry which have changed over time.
Moreover, industrialization took over to modernized society regarding the ancestral background and deprive the identity of the most vulnerable communities, Latin America. Not only emphasizes the declining loss of identity, history, and language when the community keep their voice in a mute mode but it also the oppressors take control of who they are and where they come from. In addition to this, a great comparison can be “When Afro becomes like Indigenous: Garifuna and Afro-Indigenous Politics in Honduras” by Mark Anderson, when neoliberal multiculturalism restricted the recognition of their cultural difference and ethics rights and entangled relations between blackness and indigeneity but also it marginalizes them and cultural rights fails to address structural racism effecting these minorities. The same effect is addressing the DREAMERs because they don’t feel recognize even though the alliances they have formed in their struggle for their history and rights, sometimes lacks political representation. Furthermore, the disruptive dream of many immigrant youths in the and their parents in the United States have a blurry identity, either if they are insiders or outsiders of the sovereign nation, have affected many. Although, The Museum of the Stick may appear to be stable, they have changed the ideas that are reflected in social, political, and right.
However, The Museum of The Stick not just shows us how differently a culture can be, but also it shows how strong can be a society full of power and determination to fight and break all those barriers set by those oppressors. This powerful art talks by itself in a great manner that can promote integrity and empathy for the rights that remain sheer within the Hispanic society and force the ties of trust within the community and family and their mental health and to look for a prospective solution among the immigrant youth.As it is mention few paragraphs above in the article titled, “Disrupting the Dream: Undocumented Youth Reframe Citizenship and Deportability Through Anti-Deportation Activism” mentions how one group of 1.5 generation undocumented organizations in Chicago, the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL) has responded to normative rules of citizenship, especially through the advocacy against the deportation of individuals who do not fit in hegemonic models. The Immigrant Youth Justice League has a complex and conceptual landscape of various states of belonging because it approaches with different living experiences in the Hispanic community.
Moreover, this organization focus on how they frame responses to federal deportation policies. This organization takes place in the context of a movement led by undocumented 1.5 generation youth whose tactics have included first-person testimony and civil disobedience. Also, there are plenty of dedicated organizations that help immigrants and refugees that need support. This is significant because the I.J.Y.
L place the undocumented at the front line of the national talk on immigration. Young undocumented activists that fight daily for their rights has increased dramatically and they also fight for the rights of other people who do not fit nation-state boundary for legal status or easing deportation. Undocumented organizations are moving away from the comfort zone and making better access to right by measuring worthiness according to the nation-state’s norms and towards articulating rights based on the needs of each undocumented immigrant, their ties to the community and family, and their mental health. This is a great awareness that can promote and emphasize the right of some to remain within. However, they are some that are left out, marginalized, criminalized and deported because of their fear to be known in society. Additionally, more powerful impacts are making these young undocumented immigrants in telling their personal stories and exposing it to the public so can everyone know what they have been through at an early age of their life.
Adding to this, participating in civil disobedience, like fighting individual deportation; this is not changing law enforcement and deportation policies. Perhaps is the most powerful of a challenge for the Hispanic community to gain power and diminish the fear that they feel through such situation. These tactics and political work of the undocumented 1.5 generation continues to evolve