I still don't understand how we can get away in this country with discriminating, harrassing and even disappearing and killing undocumented immigrants the way we do. It's just disgusting and revolting and it needs to stop. Especially when the target is children.

Kids who are brought into the United States by their parents have a right to an education all the way up to 12th grade. Then, they become limbmigrants : immigrant teenagers who live in limbo with no residency and no official documentation who cannot get work or go to college under public education scholarships (even if they attended and excelled at public schools all their lives). What's worse, a lot of these kids would anyhow have to find work to go to college but that's also denied to them once they graduate from 12th grade.

It's madness that the system is rigged so these kids have to work at "illegal" jobs, with no protections under labor law. It is also criminal to suggest they go back to the countries their parents uprooted them from when most identify themselves by the time they hit 17-18 years of age as simply Americans.

That's why the DREAM Act was introduced by a bi-partisan committee into the Senate. Modeled after similar state laws, there's a push to make it a federal mandate to protect undocumented immigrant teenagers getting ready to go to college or to join the Army.

It's not a "short-cut" to naturalization but, honestly, it ought to be ESPECIALLY if they end up doing Volunteer Corps or serving in the US Armed Forces. But those can become amendments after the law is passed. From Dreams Deferred: Criminalizing Immigrant Youth:

That is where the DREAM Act comes in.  The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, is bipartisan bill first introduced 2001 to grant undocumented youth conditional legal status if they:

• were brought here before the age of 16
• have lived in the United States continuously for five years
• have no criminal record
• graduate from high school and complete two years of college or military service.

We have here on the side of our blog a widget that you can used to find out who your US Representatives and Senators are so you can call them and ask them to support and pass the DREAM Act of 2009. Or you can go over to CHANGE.ORG and sign their petition.