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Why The Dream Act Would Buy Me A Cross-Country Road Trip

Paresh Dave |
December 1, 2010 | 2:04 p.m. PST

Executive Producer

DREAM Act supporters at a Los Angeles rally. (Creative Commons)
DREAM Act supporters at a Los Angeles rally. (Creative Commons)
No one wants to be that guy. The one who needs a ride everywhere because he’s either too lazy to earn his driver’s license or his parents won’t let him try to get one.

But then there are those guys and gals in the U.S.--at least a couple million of them--who never even have the chance to test out their driving skills because they’re in the country illegally. In my group of seven best friends, that guy was a 20-year-old now studying at the University of Texas. He’s worried if I use his real name he’ll be subjected to unnecessary scrutiny by potential employers, so I’ll call him Andre Paul.

Paul is one of the estimated 2.1 million undocumented immigrants whose lives would become simpler this month if Congress passes the DREAM Act, which would grant them permanent citizenship after a six-year provisional period provided their credentials are up to par. Like all other green card holders, DREAM Acters would still not be allowed to vote.

Paul arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and has been here for at least five years. He graduated from a high school in Texas before moving to San Diego, where he attended a community college for two years. Finally, he has no arrests on his record. Put that all together and he’s already qualified to get his green card in 2016 if the DREAM Act becomes law.

Most of the people like Paul were dragged to the U.S. by their parents, who sought to realize the whole American Dream thing. Paul’s parents ended up getting deported to India because their time to legally remain in the U.S. had expired.

It’s bad enough he was separated from them. But then back in the States, he has to deal with derision from friends like me who are frustrated that he’s always in need of ride and never once able to give one. Then there’s the fact he had to sneak his way into Texas from San Diego.

Plane or train weren’t options after an undocumented Harvard student was nearly deported when he tried to board an airplane this summer. Instead, Paul hitched a ride with a friend of a friend to Denver, avoiding the anti-immigration hotbeds of Arizona and New Mexico. Paul’s other uncle from Houston met him in Denver and drove him into Texas.

The L.A. Times recently featured other potential beneficiaries of the DREAM Act, focusing on student leaders at California’s public universities. Paul’s no leader. He’s just a beer-chugging, bike-riding, women-loving college student hoping to have a more than comfortable life thanks to a career as a chemical engineer.

Opponents of the DREAM Act are right--you don’t have to be a high-achieving student to earn a way into legal status. The law is even vague enough that Paul, if granted full citizenship down the road, might be able to file some papers to get his parents back into the U.S. legally someday if he can wade through pounds of red tape. The shortcomings, however, don’t outweigh the  DREAM Act’s rewards.

Unlike the leaders featured by the Times, Paul doesn’t believe he needs to compensate for anything. He just doesn’t see why there’s a voice in his head that isn’t in the heads of his six best friends.

High school was a time of football games, dances, board games, movies and shenanigans in the park late at night. In a state like California, and especially in a city like San Diego, where friends and the destinations they frequently visit are spread apart by miles and mountains, cars are essential for mobility. We couldn’t leave our friend in his plain-walled cave, so we constantly switched off who had to pick up and drop off poor Paul. His aunt and uncle’s house, where he was living, burned down in the 2007 wildfires that ravaged a wide plot of San Diego County.

Luckily, the three of them moved after the fires into a house closer to the six others of us. The move didn’t make many other things easier. He can’t apply for financial aid. Finding a job will be tough, since it’s illegal to hire someone who doesn’t have a legal right to be in the U.S. Unless he moves to New Mexico, Utah or Washington, he can’t get a driver’s license. All along, there’s a voice chirping in Paul’s head, reminding him one mix-up with the law and he could end up in less-than-appealing conditions alongside his parents in India.

Outside of serving as a terrific friend to the six of us, Paul hasn’t added much to this country yet. Who knows what he could do if there weren’t a block standing in his way and a stigma attached to his legal status.

The detractors fear people like Paul, if given legal status, would steal away jobs from Americans who’ve always been here legally. Competition, of course, drives innovation. And who wouldn’t want to root for someone who finally made it through a religious-sanctioned eight-day fast after years of failure to make it all the way through.

“By the end of the fast, I had transformed into a person of strong will, achieving self-restraint and ultimately growing as a person,” Paul wrote in a college application essay. “I realized that any attachment or struggle in life can be tackled with the right motivation and courage.”

The clock is ticking on members of Congress to act with similar courage. If they don’t pass a by the end of the year, it won’t happen under the Republican-led House of Representatives in 2011 of 2012. By then, Paul would have graduated. It would be devastating to be writing an article a few years from now about a Canadian engineer inventing the world’s most-environmentally friendly motor vehicle when it could have been a permanent resident of the nation that sports red, white...and blue.

Just think if Paul engineered that car, and drove the six of us in it. By now, he’s racked up enough mileage on his tab to owe all of us a ride from Los Angeles to Miami. For me, the cross-country road trip would be a dream come true.

Reach executive producer Paresh Dave here. Follow him on Twitter: @peard33.



 

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