Nick
03-21-2006, 09:05 PM
Title: CUNY for the DREAM Act (http://www.theticker.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/20/441f27f7223b2)
Author: Walter Barrientos
Publisher: The Ticker (http://www.theticker.org/)
Date Published: March 20, 2006
Full Text:
CUNY for the DREAM Act
by Walter Barrientos
Each year over 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with the hope of obtaining higher education. For many, as the first generation of college bound graduates, the opportunity to attend college and pursue their academic careers provides a detour from the poverty and oppression that immigrant families escape each year as they enter the United States. With the anti-immigrant political and cultural environment of this country, however, undocumented students not only encounter living in the permanent underclass but they must also live in constant fear of deportation.
In CUNY alone, which has a long history of providing higher education to immigrant families, there are officially 3,000 undocumented students who are educating themselves with the hope of one day being able to work or perhaps attend graduate school. These undocumented students often do not have the opportunity to advance their careers in the only country that many of them recognize as their home.
Now there is hope for undocumented students, through the passage of the DREAM act. The DREAM act (S.2075) will remove barriers for undocumented students by providing youth who have arrived in this country before the age of 16 and lived here for at least five years the opportunity to opportunity to apply for a conditional permanent residency status as long as he or she has completed at least two years of college or military service. The bill, which is currently in the Senate, needs strong community support to open the doors to equal education and opportunity for immigrant youth.
As a result, the CUNY Immigrant Student Affairs Committee was created in the University Student Senate to bring organizations and student groups of CUNY together to support the DREAM act. The committee aims to gather the support of Chancellor Goldstein and organize a movement in support of the act.
For more information and upcoming meetings, send an email to [email protected].
Submitted by Annonymous. Thanks.
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Author: Walter Barrientos
Publisher: The Ticker (http://www.theticker.org/)
Date Published: March 20, 2006
Full Text:
CUNY for the DREAM Act
by Walter Barrientos
Each year over 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with the hope of obtaining higher education. For many, as the first generation of college bound graduates, the opportunity to attend college and pursue their academic careers provides a detour from the poverty and oppression that immigrant families escape each year as they enter the United States. With the anti-immigrant political and cultural environment of this country, however, undocumented students not only encounter living in the permanent underclass but they must also live in constant fear of deportation.
In CUNY alone, which has a long history of providing higher education to immigrant families, there are officially 3,000 undocumented students who are educating themselves with the hope of one day being able to work or perhaps attend graduate school. These undocumented students often do not have the opportunity to advance their careers in the only country that many of them recognize as their home.
Now there is hope for undocumented students, through the passage of the DREAM act. The DREAM act (S.2075) will remove barriers for undocumented students by providing youth who have arrived in this country before the age of 16 and lived here for at least five years the opportunity to opportunity to apply for a conditional permanent residency status as long as he or she has completed at least two years of college or military service. The bill, which is currently in the Senate, needs strong community support to open the doors to equal education and opportunity for immigrant youth.
As a result, the CUNY Immigrant Student Affairs Committee was created in the University Student Senate to bring organizations and student groups of CUNY together to support the DREAM act. The committee aims to gather the support of Chancellor Goldstein and organize a movement in support of the act.
For more information and upcoming meetings, send an email to [email protected].
Submitted by Annonymous. Thanks.
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