Come DREAM for America - National DREAM Act Graduation
Published June 21, 2009 @ 05:11PM PT
With the Capitol Dome behind them, hundreds of youth from all over the country, along with education, faith, business, immigrant and civil rights leaders are expected to participate in a National DREAM Graduation ceremony, hosted by the United We Dream Coalition (UWD).
Each year, 65,000 immigrant students who graduate from U.S. high schools are barred from pursuing their dreams of higher education. Advocates will underscore the importance of advancing the “DREAM Act” and the “American Dream Act” to give these youth a chance to attend college and pursue their goals.
The acts would restore states’ rights to determine residency requirements for in-state tuition and establish a path to legal status and eventual citizenship for undocumented youth. The graduation ceremony will recognize the talents and significant academic achievements of immigrant students who would benefit from the legislation, highlighting their contributions and service in local communities.
UWD is an immigrant-youth led coalition committed to supporting immigration reform policies that create a pathway to citizenship, keep families together, and promote the social, economic, and political integration of all immigrants.
Schedule of National Action:
9AM - Legislative Training
Location: American Federation of Teachers, 555 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington, DC
12PM Graduation
Location: Lower Senate Park, corner of Louisiana Ave and D St NW, Washington DC
2PM - 5PM - Legislative visits in congressional offices
DC Graduation Facebook Page
Registration for DC Graduation
Link to Map of actions
The national graduation will be live twittered here and videos uploaded to our Youtube and Vimeo
In addition to serving as Master of Ceremonies and doing the closing speech for the graduation, students from DreamActivist have reached out to other organizations and helped arrange solidarity actions across the United States. For more details, see http://www.dreamactivist.org/dream-graduations-coast-coast/
To contact immigrant students, educators or for more information please contact: Tolu Olubunmi (olubunmi@nilc.org) 240-505-5921(c)
Comments
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
-
Prerna Lal
- San Francisco, CA
-
Dream ACTivist is a law-school bound queer undocumented student and blogger. Her family came to the United States legally but due to the massive USCIS backlog, she aged out on their visa petition at the age of 21. Despite not being able to drive, work, get financial aid or even instate-tuition for college, she graduated with a Masters degree at the age of 22 and since then, has been volunteering with organizations in the community and working on pro-migrant reforms such as the DREAM Act
Pass the DREAM Act Featured Actions
-
- Started by Prerna Lal
- 5430 People
-
- Started by Prerna Lal
- 17 People (6 comments)
Ask Your Congressperson to Support the DREAM Act!
Share Your Story as an Undocumented Youth
If I could comment and in fact correct a statement in this article. It is the first sentence of the second paragraph and it is absolutely completely false. 65,000 immigrants are not barred from attending college. Each year 65,000 ILLEGAL immigrants are barred form attending college. That is a very big difference. To put this into perspective, we could say that very likely each day, 65,000 women turned away by liquor stores when trying to buy alcohol. That sounds terrible! But when we state the entire correct statement-each day 65,000 UNDERAGE women are not allowed to buy alcohol-it makes complete sense. In my opinion, the deportation of illegal immigrant students, or the barring of illegal immigrants from attending college is not the problem. They are here illegally, they should not have the same benefits that legal citizens do. The problem is how difficult it is to gain citizenship. We need to create better programs and assistance to immigrants that wish to come to this country. Maybe subsidize classes for them to learn english, help them gain residency, find a place to live. I think we are focusing on the wrong system here and that is an especially bad idea in a time of economic crisis.
Posted by kevin potts on 07/01/2009 @ 03:04PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.