Dick Durbin: Bipartisan support for Dream Act needed

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...,3614803.story

Very rare opinion piece from Senator Dick Durbin, we should leave comments telling him to pass DREAM as a stand alone bill...

Not just him, lets also urge other members to push for the DREAM Act as a stand alone bill.

Call him. I believe there's a rally in Chicago he's committed to attend. I think we need to get back to our "roots" (circa '06-'07) and start calling members of Congress IN EARNEST. I've started again.

Dude that is what we ALL need to be doing, urging congressmen to introduce the DREAM Act as a stand-alone bill.

Ok...

This is a pre-emptive opinion piece because of the impending March scheduled for Chicago this weekend. Just like the 'blueprint' for reform (aka, the four lines that Schumer and Graham scribbled hastily) that was published nearly a month ago, not coincidentally, right before the March in Washington D.C. We need to see actions, not read the same litany over, and over, and over every time the politicians feel pressed to the wall. Why couldn't he push for it last year when it was reintroduced? There was no supposed ill part on the Republican side since HCR hadn't been legislated? He need to hold his end of the bargain.

i just read that supreme court justice stevens is retiring. This will be one of the excuse for these ball-less, spineless senator and president not touching immigration. come election, they will just say that they didn't have time.

You make a great point there. Another excuse to avoid immigration during the Summer & Fall season, they will porbably say "We didn't have time or selecting a new judge took our time".

It's so sad how Congress doesn't want to confront the issues.

The best thing we can do is to call and ask for the Dream Act as a stand alone bill.

"Stevens said Friday he will step down when the court finishes its work for the summer in late June or early July. He said he hopes his successor is confirmed "well in advance of the commencement of the court's next term."

Stevens' announcement leaves ample time for the White House to settle on a successor and for Senate Democrats, who control a 59-vote majority, to hold confirmation hearings and a vote before the court's next term begins in October. Republicans have not ruled out attempts to delay confirmation."

There's plenty of time to do immigration as well, only if Obama doesn't keep ADDING to the agenda non-crucial items - like off-shore drilling - we keep reading time, after time that they've been writing the bill for 9 months. Not even healthcare took 9 MONTHS of writing. It took that long of a debate, but the legislation was in print in a very short period of time. The immigration act of 1996 transformed immigration law immensely and was written in a very short period of time.

Now that we know that CIR ain't going to happen this year because of the recently announce retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens and confirmation hearings to be around June, which usually last around 20-30 days. It is more important than ever before to push for DREAM as a alone bill.

And that delay is particularly annoying, since many parts of the bill are undoubtedly already "written" in at least rough form from the last time it was considered. Representative Gutierrez made that clear in the interview he had (with CNN?) back in March at the time of the march in Washington. It is really terribly frustrating.