Nixing DREAM Act may doom GOPers
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...om_gopers.html


Nixing DREAM Act may doom GOPers
Albor Ruiz - Ny Local

Thursday, December 16th 2010, 11:50 AM

.Its death has been announced many times, but the DREAM Act is still struggling mightily for its life.

"We are hoping there will be a vote in the Senate in the next few days, and we are asking everybody to call their senators to urge them to vote for the DREAM Act," said Sonia Güinansaca, 21, a junior at Hunter College.

"Right now we are four votes short."

Even though Güinansaca has lived in Harlem since she was 5 years old, the Ecuadoran-born activist has no papers.

Passage of the bill would give Güinansaca and more than 1.5 million other undocumented students a way to remain in the country legally. But they face an uphill battle on Capitol Hill.

The DREAM Act passed the House last week, but the Senate, where a GOP filibuster will require at least 60 votes to approve it, is a different story.

Both New York senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have reaffirmed their support for the bill.

"If there is a vote, she will definitely support it," a Gillibrand spokesman told us Tuesday.

The junior senator said, "Every student in New York and across this country deserves the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential," and noted "current law unfairly punishes thousands of young people who received all their education in the United States and know only the United States as home."

Schumer said he has been a longtime supporter of the DREAM Act and has worked hard to include it as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package. "Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues have refused to act on a comprehensive plan to fix our broken immigration system. As a co-sponsor of the bill, I will vote for the DREAM Act when it reaches the Senate floor," he said.

Yet, not enough senators have committed themselves to vote for this legislation.

That's why the undocumented students and their supporters have launched an all-out campaign to persuade a number of centrist senators, some of whom voted for the bill before, to support the act.

As part of that effort, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda issued a "most wanted" list this week targeting 10 senators they will pressure to publicly declare their stand on the bill.

The list is composed of Democrats. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) as well as Republicans Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Richard Lugar (Ind.), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Susan Collins (Maine), Scott Brown (Mass.), George Voinovich (Ohio) and George LeMieux (Fla.). So far, only Lugar has announced his support.

For Latinos, the Senate vote is a litmus test of sorts. Senators will have to decide if they stand with the Latino community or against it. Even ultraconservative columnist and former Reagan administration official Linda Chávez believes it would be a huge mistake for the GOP to vote against the DREAM Act.

"Do Republicans really want to tell young people who've lived here most of their lives, who may speak no other language but English and who are even willing to sacrifice themselves on the battlefield: 'We don't want you?'" Chávez wrote. "A number of Republicans who previously supported the legislation - including one of its chief authors, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah - have decided it is too risky to vote for it now."

But she warns, "The real risk is to the future of the Republican Party."

A vote against the DREAM Act would be a terrible injustice against thousands of bright, deserving, young people. But it would also be the Republican Party's swan song with Latino voters, who would never support a GOP brimming with hostility toward them and their children.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...#ixzz18IQXUsRl