Shattered dream
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
— Langston Hughes
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) died in the U.S. Senate last week, victim of the new wave of xenophobia that recently has infected a substantial proportion of the U.S. electorate and the political class, mostly (although not solely) those of the Republican persuasion.
With it went the hopes and aspirations for a normal, productive life for an estimated 1.2 million immigrant youths brought into this country as children by their undocumented immigrant parents.
The DREAM Act would have paved a path to legalization for these young people provided that they attend at least two years of college or join the military. And, although these blameless, mostly Latino youngsters are the most heart-rending casualties of this latest nativist outrage — on the heels of the odious “show me your papers” Arizona law (SB 1070) and with the looming threat of the abolition of birthright citizenship — they will not be the only ones to pay a price.
After their dream-killing vote last Saturday, the Republicans should not waste another dollar or one more minute on their cynical campaigns to “reach out” to Latino voters (translation: to hoodwink Latino voters) by appealing to their presumed “conservative social and religious values.” Forget about it.
The Republicans’ actions and the vote tallies speak for themselves eloquently. The DREAM Act did not die for lack of majority support in the U.S. Congress; it died because of the fierce resistance of a minority of Senators, overwhelmingly Republican, willing to abuse the procedural rules of the Senate to frustrate the will of a majority of Senators and the wishes and prayers of immigrant communities across the country.
Indeed, the DREAM Act won a majority of votes in both chambers of Congress. In the House of Representatives, where only a simple majority is needed for passage, the DREAM Act was approved by a vote of 216 to 198. Of those 216 “yea” votes, only eight were cast by Republicans, three of those by Cuban Americans.
Ironically, in the Senate the vote was much more lopsided than in the House — 55 for and 41 against the Dream Act. Yet, because in recent years the Republicans have abused the arcane Senate rules as to effectively require a supermajority of 60 votes (out of 100) before any legislation can be passed, a vote of 55 for to 41 against was enough to kill the DREAM Act.
Who killed the Dream Act and thus condemned more than a million young people to a situation of limbo with no end in sight, deprived of work and educational opportunities, even the chance to obtain a driver’s license? Beyond the undemocratic means used to defeat the legislation, the short answer to the question is that Republican Senators killed the DREAM Act. Senate Democrats (and independents who usually vote with the Democrats) voted 52 to 5 for the DREAM Act. Senate Republicans voted 36 to 3 against the DREAM Act. The arithmetic is clear on who stands with us — and who against us.
The deeper answer involves a recent change in American politics, specifically the absence of any desire on the part of Republicans to engage in bipartisanship on almost any issue. Whereas only a few years ago there was a sliver of Republican support in the Senate, sufficient to pass a much more generous immigration reform law than the DREAM Act, a law that would have legalized 12 million undocumented immigrants, such collaboration is impossible today.
The recent success of the Tea Party in defeating insufficiently doctrinaire conservatives has terrified Republican lawmakers into becoming anti-immigration hawks. Symptomatic of this fear factor is the case of Senator John McCain, who just a few years ago joined the late Senator Ted Kennedy as co-sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR), and now voted “no” on the DREAM Act. Also voting “no:” two of the few remaining Republican “moderates” left in the Senate, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. These so-called GOP moderates voted nay despite the fact that the DREAM Act would have benefitted the most sympathetic segment of the undocumented immigrant population (children who did not make the decision to commit any illegal action) and that it counted with the support of everyone from religious leaders to the Pentagon.
Unmoved by the enormous pain they have inflicted upon more than a million young people and their families, zealots like Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration organization, are gloating about their victory and planning to go on the offensive. With a Republican led House of Representatives and a smaller Democratic majority in the Senate in 2011-2012, we can expect any number of obnoxious anti-immigrant proposals to be issued by key Republican-controlled House committees.
Yet, as a comment in the Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper, the News and Observer, noted, while Republicans were on the right side of history in the nineteenth century when they opposed the expansion of slavery to states newly admitted to the Union, they are very much on the wrong side of history when they stand in the way of so many young men and women, full of talent and promise who, given the chance, could make a major contribution to 21st century America.
