DREAM Act Portal Forum - Immigration Reform Inching Up on the Agenda

This article informs that some advocates are using Dream act to spearhead for a more Comprehensive solution.This would also make sense since some anti-immigrant advocacy groups are also targeting the Dream act.

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He’s now being pressured to make good on those promises.

Some advocates hope to chip away at the problem with legislation like the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, happily known as the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to legalization for a small slice of the most sympathetic undocumented immigrants — the children of illegal aliens who’ve lived here at least 5 years, finished high school, are of “good moral character” and complete two years of college or military service. It’s hard to say no to that particular group, and even the AFL-CIO, which doesn’t always support the immigrant advocates’ agenda, says it’s on board with this one.

Then again, the bill did die last year in the Senate. But there are more Democrats to support it now, and it’s likely to have the backing of the White House: Obama supported it while campaigning, as well as similar legislation as a state legislator in Illinois.

Still, as Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center, put it to me recently when talking about the DREAM Act, no one really sees that as a sufficient solution.

“It’s a good bill, but it nowhere begins to speak to being a solution to a problem that clearly needs to be addressed,” she said. “The American public voted in the president and new Democratic class in Congress because they wanted a change that meant solving tougher problems. Democrats are going to quickly find there is nobody to blame anymore on this as the months pass, if it’s not solved. There’s no more George Bush in the White House. The people making decisions at [the Department of Homeland Security] are the ones that Obama has picked.”