Development, Relief, And Education For Alien Minors Research Articles

The “American DREAM”: Understanding White Americans’ Support for the DREAM Act and Punitive Immigration Policies

The American public has overwhelmingly supported the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act since 2001. The support is widespread and cuts across race, ethnic, and party lines. Given the United States’ anti-immigrant/immigration sentiment in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, support for the DREAM Act is perplexing. To that end, political scientists, sociologists, and education scholars, among others, have pointed to the exceptional framing of the DREAM Act as the primary predictor of support. However, a significant portion of non-Hispanic white Americans who support the DREAM Act also support restrictive and often punitive immigration policies. What influences most white Americans to support DREAM Act legislation? And what leads a subset of these same individuals to simultaneously support restrictive immigration policies that hurt DREAMers and their families? I argue that predispositions explain these two contradictory policy preferences. Data from the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) and the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES) demonstrates that white Americans use racial resentment and egalitarianism as justifications to support both policies. However, the effects are conditioned on partisanship.

Discursive de/humanizing: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of television news representations of undocumented youth

This article addresses television news coverage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2010, which would have created a path to legal residency for thousands of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Considering the role that news media play in socially constructing groups of people, through an analysis of English- and Spanish-language evening television news coverage of the DREAM Act of 2010, the author examined discursive practices used to represent undocumented youth in both dehumanizing and humanizing ways. The author discusses the implications of these types of discourses for education policy understanding by the public and education stakeholders.

A Political Action against the Good Immigrant Narrative

This brief article draws from research on the undocumented student experience and incorporates personal perspectives about the complexity behind the good immigrant-model, minority narrative on identity formation. From a de-colonial lens, this article aims to emphasize the impact of the DREAM(Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors)-er narrative on the immigrants right’s movement and urges a need to separate the narrative from the movement as a political action to continue to diversify immigration reform advocacy as more inclusive of various immigrant and undocumented sub-communities. Lastly, this article aims to challenge the sociopolitical construct of the undocumented term on identity and introduces the importance of person-centered language to externalize undocumented legal status from the individual to position it as a circumstance rather than an identity.

Advocating for the DREAM Act: Why Pediatricians Should Care and What They Can Do.

* Abbreviations: DACA — : Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals DREAM — : Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States before the age of 16, lived in the United States for at least 5 years, have no significant criminal history, and were <31 years of age on June 15, 2012. They are sometimes termed “Dreamers” after the never-passed legislation known as the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. The DREAM Act would provide a path to citizenship for this population. DACA does not. President Trump recently rescinded the executive memorandum that created the DACA program.1 Although his action does not take effect immediately, it leaves nearly a million Dreamers in limbo. Unless Congress acts by March 5, 2018, Dreamers’ legal status will expire. Starting on that date, more than 1000 DACA recipients will lose their legal status every day. If that happens, they will lose their ability to work lawfully and to take out educational loans. They will face potential deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This will have both a personal impact and a societal one. One DACA recipient (and a coauthor of this article) described the personal impact: > In the past few months, I have felt the return of that crippling fear. I feel it in my … Address correspondence to John D. Lantos, MD, Children’s Mercy Hospital Bioethics Center, Kansas City, 2401 Gillham Rd, Kansas City, MO 64108. E-mail: jlantos{at}cmh.edu

Leaving the ‘perfect DREAMer’ behind? Narratives and mobilization in immigration reform

This paper focuses on the consequences of the narrative used to support immigration reform by some immigrant activists, and especially how this narrative may negatively impact potential allies. Policies and policy proposals such as the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals have been consistently championed using a specific narrative of undocumented youths which presents them as well-assimilated, driven, and US-educated. The paper is drawn from 60 in-depth interviews conducted with undocumented youths in 2013 in New York City and northern New Jersey. The paper builds on the literature relative to narratives in social movements, framing and policy-making. Findings indicate that recent campaigns continue to make extensive use of this narrative, even though it creates a divide within the undocumented community. This unintended consequence has recently led some activists to step away from the ‘perfect DREAMer’.

The “Orphan” Child: Politics of Vulnerability and Circuits of Precarity

The proposed Children in Families First Act of 2014 (CHIFF) would have injected $240 million into the transnational adoption industry. Animated by dubious assertions that 200 million children are “stuck and forgotten, living in orphanages,” the CHIFF campaign featured racialized images of “the most vulnerable children in the world” who “need families.” Using a comparative lens centered on ideologies of vulnerability and rescue, I seek to account for the elision of economic, social, and political conditions of precarity within three sets of legal and legislative debates: adoption involving an “Indian child”; the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act; and same-sex marriage. Based on analysis of legal and policy texts, I consider how discourses of racialized vulnerability and the “best interests” of the child, in tandem with the reconsolidation of the nuclear family in recent applications of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and immigration legislation, orient attention toward assimilation of children and away from the conditions by which children become systematically vulnerable. I contend that the focus on parental relationships and behaviors relegates violence to the past, re-instantiates the equation of racialized vulnerability with parental “irresponsibility,” and symbolically uplifts (queer) couples and nations that “rescue” vulnerable children.

Learning and Unlearning from Ethnic Studies

This essay approaches assimilation as a process whereby the boundary between mainstream and margin blurs, disappears, or paradoxically, is reinforced. To shed light on assimilation’s paradox, it examines the American school’s dual role as guardian of stasis and agent of change, with a focus on two desegregation cases— Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District (1931) and Mendez v. Westminster School District (1946)—the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and ethnic studies. It argues that while Alvarez, Mendez , and the DREAM Act have called for the transformation of Mexicans into Americans and the incorporation of Mexican Americans and undocumented immigrants in the American polity, ethnic studies prompts students to trace the mutable boundaries of that polity and to envision new subjects and communities.

By right of service: the military as a pathway to earned citizenship

In this article, I use the civic republican tradition as a theoretical lens to examine how Mexican-Americans in a transnational community have drawn on their wartime service to demand equal treatment as citizens and legal residence as immigrants. I interpret this account through a frame of “Tejano republicanism” originating in the historical experience of civil rights groups led by South Texas veterans. Originating as Texas-based US citizen-only groups, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum's struggle for equal rights evolved to include a broader nationwide pan-Latino constituency including unauthorized immigrants by the 1970s. Today, both groups support military service as a pathway to citizenship for all unauthorized immigrants in the spirit of their founding generation's struggle for civil rights. But unauthorized immigrants who want to follow this pathway to citizenship can no longer do so, as they are barred from enlisting. To respond to this new challenge, I apply my historical and normative account of earned citizenship to analyze and critique current US policies governing immigrant enlistment and the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act's military service provision. As a whole, this article serves as a work of applied political theory with implications for the contemporary US immigration reform debate.

DREAMers and their families: A family impact analysis of the DREAM Act and implications for family well-being

Discourse around immigration reform largely centers on economic and national security issues and rarely mentions the well-being of families. This paper applies Family Impact Analysis (FIA) and rhetorical discourse analysis to the congressional hearings, debates, and documents surrounding the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to examine representations of immigrant families and implications for their well-being. Our analysis reveals that while the discourse in the DREAM Act and related congressional documents gives voice to undocumented children, it undermines family well-being. In particular, the Act promotes the rights of children over their parents, discourages family stability and unity, and impacts family interdependence negatively. Findings suggest that further consideration of FIA, in light of immigration reform efforts, is essential to crafting a policy that supports children and families during periods of transition.

Lost American DREAM of Undocumented Students: Understanding the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act

Lost American DREAM of Undocumented Students: Understanding the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act

Citizenship at a Cost: Undocumented Asian Youth Perceptions and the Militarization of Immigration

Two federal policies, the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program and the proposed federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, represent the militarization of immigration. Critical Race Theory is used to analyze MAVNI, the DREAM Act, and semi-structured interviews with fourteen undocumented Asian immigrant youth who believe these policies provide viable pathways to citizenship through military enlistment. The project explores the recurring pattern of militarized immigration reform in the United States and challenges scholars, policy makers, and activists to understand the relationship between immigration and legacies of American imperialism.

Citizenship at a Cost: Undocumented Asian Youth Perceptions and the Militarization of Immigration

Two federal policies, the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program and the proposed federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, represent the militarization of immigration. Critical Race Theory is used to analyze MAVNI, the DREAM Act, and semi-structured interviews with fourteen undocumented Asian immigrant youth who believe these policies provide viable pathways to citizenship through military enlistment. The project explores the recurring pattern of militarized immigration reform in the United States and challenges scholars, policy makers, and activists to understand the relationship between immigration and legacies of American imperialism.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act 2011: Not an Amnesty, But an Opportunity

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act 2011: Not an Amnesty, But an Opportunity

Things I'll Never Say: Stories of Growing Up Undocumented in the United States

Debate goes on about the proposed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. In presidential speeches, one-minute congressional floor statements, and intermittent media coverage, we hear passionate arguments for and against this federal legislation that would provide a path toward citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented students. Absent from this debate are the reallife stories of DREAMers who have been educated and raised in this country and are now desperate to contribute. This collection of autobiographical stories was written by students in Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC), a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides direct support and advocacy for low-income immigrant students who have grown up in the United States but face challenges due to financial need and immigration status. These students shed light on what it is like to grow up as undocumented youths. They talk about not being able to return to their homelands,about wanting to be accepted as Americans, and about the fear of living in the shadows. Their narratives are presented in an order that creates a sense of a young immigrant's journey: departure, crossing, arrival, alienation, and attempts at claiming a new home. It has been a decade since the DREAM Act was first introduced. How much longer will we ask them to wait?

Immigrant DREAMs: English Learners, the Texas 10% Admissions Plan, and College Academic Success

English learners (ELs) are facing unique issues in higher education that remain largely unexplored. This research focuses on college choice, enrollment, and graduation among high-achieving ELs who were eligible for automatic admission to any public higher education institution in Texas by having graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. We found that large enrollment gains for ELs were not observed until revised Texas DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) legislation stipulated that immigrant students fulfilling reformulated residency requirements were entitled to in-state tuition rates. The majority of top 10% ELs enrolled at border institutions, were largely first-generation college students, and experienced generally higher cohort graduation rates at Texas flagship universities.

Navigating the Waves of Social and Political Capriciousness: Inspiring Perspectives From DREAM-Eligible Immigrant Students

This article examines the psychological and sociological impacts of the proposed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act and in-state tuition legislation on DREAM-eligible students in the Midwestern United States. The researchers sought to capture the lived experiences of undocumented immigrant students through their rich interpretations of current immigration policy and how participants described their situation, their identity, and their dreams in relation to the volatility of their external environment.