Passing the DREAM Act

           For the immigration reform bill titled “DREAM Act” (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) to be successful in becoming a law, Hispanics living in the US should let their voices be heard about the matter.  For too long the Hispanic community has been content in leaving the fight to the few committed community leaders and politicians.  However, more should be done especially from the people who benefited most, which are the children of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.  After 25 years since President Reagan signed the bill into law, the beneficiaries have become adults that went on to get a higher education, serve within our nation’s military, and become productive members of the American society.  Yet, another generation of the brightest minds amongst the undocumented population are being denied an opportunity that can dictate their future.  Since they cannot express their concerns publicly due to the fear of deportation, it is our responsibility to speak for the voiceless and let the politicians become aware of our concerns within our communities. 

 Within the Hispanic community, nationalities from throughout Latin America live side by side and share a mother tongue, history, and cultural values which make the fabric of America pure.  However, outside from the good Hispanic food and music, we cannot pretend to ignore the fraternal struggles of immigration amongst the undocumented population.  We as a whole cannot let nationalism (i.e. Dominican, Colombian, Salvadorian, etc.) deter us from helping our neighbor next door from living a life of insecurity due to the possibility of deportation.  The consequence of deportation or the threat of it does not benefit any person because in the end it just separates family members, deny the young educational and employment opportunities, and most important neglect them from our society.  Simply put, this matter affects everyone and by increasing the volume of your TV set to watch “Gordo y La Flaca” will not resolve this issue. 

 Currently, our political establishment is divided on the topic of immigration.  A number of leaders from both parties who have been vying to get the Hispanic vote made promises that their policies will benefit our interest.  An example is President Obama, who during his 2008 presidential campaign speech at the annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference said that

“When communities are terrorized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn't working and we need to change it.”  (Gutierrez, 2011)

President Obama talks about relating with the frustration of the Hispanic community and the will to seek relief for our concerns, but his administration has an aggressive track record when it comes to deportation.  For the fiscal year 2010, “392,862 undocumented immigrants were deported from the US…In contrast, during the 2008 fiscal year, during the George W. Bush presidency, 369,221 people were deported” (Madison, 2011).  With numbers like these, Hispanics ponder if President Obama really value the interest of the community and if he is serious about Immigration reform, which obviously does not seem to be the case.

                On the other end of the political spectrum, Tea Party members and a few Republicans do not support the policy of immigration reform.  They claim that undocumented individuals harm the economy such as taking jobs away from the average American, endanger our borders and law enforcement, and pose a huge burden on taxpayers such as Medicaid.  Some of their arguments can be justified to a certain extent but immigration is not the sole reason of such problems.  An Immigration Policy Center study by Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, titled “The Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform”, argues the benefits that the legalization program for undocumented individuals can bring “a large economic benefit – a cumulative $1.5 trillion in added US GDP over 10 years…In stark contrast, a deportation-only policy would result in a loss of $2.6 trillion in GDP over 10 years” (Hinojosa-Ojeda , 2010).  Below are some more interesting data regarding the benefits of immigration reform from Dr. Hinojosa-Ojeda’s study:

• The higher earning power of newly legalized workers would mean increased tax revenues of $4.5-$5.4 billion in the first three years.

• Higher personal income would also generate increased consumer spending—enough to support 750,000–900,000 jobs in the United States.

• Experience shows that legalized workers open bank accounts, buy homes, and start businesses, further stimulating the U.S. economy.

• The real wages of less-skilled newly legalized workers would increase by roughly $4,405 per year, while higher-skilled workers would see their income increase $6,185 per year. The wages of native-born high skill and low skill U.S. workers also increase modestly under comprehensive immigration reform because the “wage floor” rises for all workers.

• Legalized workers invest more in their human capital, including education, job training, and English-language skills, making them even more productive workers and higher earners.

•  Mass deportation would reduce U.S. GDP by 1.46 percent, amounting to a cumulative $2.6 trillion loss in GDP over 10 years, not including the actual costs of deportation. The Center for American Progress has estimated that mass deportation would cost $206 billion to $230 billion over five years.

•  Wages would rise for less-skilled native-born workers under a mass deportation scenario, but higher-skilled natives’ wages would decrease, and there would be widespread job loss.

(Hinojosa-Ojeda , 2010)

With the above data showing that a strong benefit can be gained economically by passing the DREAM Act, it also benefits the human capital level such as keeping the best minds from leaving our borders.  Clearly, the benefits of immigration reform outweigh the negatives that anti-immigration supports are proclaiming.

                In making this bill become reality, members of the Hispanic community, other immigrant communities, and supporters of the bill must gather to work together to become one voice.  It has been a decade since the DREAM Act was introduced into congress and clearly the political establishment does not take our serious enough.  Statistical studies indicate that in 50 years the Hispanic community will become the majority in the US.  However, Hispanics cannot take solace of this possibility if the minority group will dictate the interest of the majority in the future.  In having a strong Hispanic interest group with vast monetary resources to promote and defend our interests in congress, politicians will begin to take us more serious.  The Hispanic community has become weary of broken promises and now is the time to remind politicians that the decision they make today, such as rejecting the DREAM Act, will have implications not just for the current elections but for future ones as well.      

References  

Gutierrez, L.. (2011, August 01). President Obama's Lost Pledge To Latinos. The Guardian.      Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/01/us-immigration-obama.

Hinojosa-Ojeda , R. . (2010, January 11). The economic benefits of immigration reform. Immigration Policy Center. Retrieved from http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/economic-benefits-immigration-reform.

Madison, L.. (2011, May 11). How serious is obama about immigration reform?. CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20061893-503544.html.

Happy Birthday Freddy Mercury!!! RIP!!!

 

I used to hate Queen when I was growing but I want to thank my old friend from childhood for making me appreciate this great band. Believe it or not, this band has influenced my music when I used to play and my perspective on life. Freddy was a great performer and I admired that.

FDR's moment: Something that Obama is missing.

With the current political environment drawn by partisan boundaries, it would be nice to have a President such FDR to take on the Tea Party influence Republican Party and to set the country on the right course.  With the economy looking weak pass the 2012 elections, the Tea Party’s latest attempt in holding the nation hostage over the debt deficit (in which the US was downgraded by S&P from AAA to AA for the first time ever), and Republican House Speaker John Boehner declining President Obama’s request for a joint congressional session for this Wednesday (September 7^th) to announce his jobs plan, President Obama is suffering from a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome.  With the “Machiavellian” inspired GOP, with its Tea Party’s “gang of six”, they had bullied Obama to a corner where the President has saturated or abandoned his policies such as the health reform plan, the size of the stimulus package, extension of the Bush Tax cuts for the top percentile, reluctance to implement environmental policies such as ozone standards, and severe government spending cuts that neglects creating new jobs.  Clearly Obama’s bi-partisan attempts and compromise have disappointed many American voters.  Sadly, “Yes We Can!” has been replaced by “No We Can’t”.

With Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell publicly stating that his main objective is to replace the President in 2012, it is clear that the GOP do not want to work with the Democrats because they fear it will only credit the Obama administration.  President Obama must duplicate FDR’s 1936 MSG speech by calling out his foes influenced by special interest and to reach out to the American people to remind them that he is there to work and defend their interest.  Clearly, this is the time for the President to fight out of the corner ring to defend his position or the bell will ring to end the round and fight, which is November 2012.

What this country desperately needs is not a President who is trying to appear overly “cool” or one who wants to compromise with a party that refuses to do so.  The nation needs someone who is not afraid to speak his voice in defending the interest of the American people.  The hypocrisy of the Tea Party is that they are not concern about defending the average Joe and Jane from the so-call giant tentacles of “big” government.  Keep in mind, the majority of Tea-Party supporters are suffering from unemployment, lack of health care, foreclosures, and dependent on the Social Security system[1].  Yet, many supporters are not aware of the relationship between the Tea Party leadership and special interest (the culprits of the economic downturn) who they are supposed to be fighting against.  

Remember, it is special interest that is funding the Republican Party and they are trying to stop the Obama administration from suing the main banks to be accountable over the mortgage and credit crisis.  Furthermore, it is the greed of special interest that does not care about keeping jobs in America.  Their overall agenda is to make profit by outsourcing jobs to keep their overhead costs low and profits high.  They would rather pay less than a $1/day to a laborer in Vietnam to produce a shirt rather than pay the American $20/hour with benefits.  Special interest pushed many past administrations to buy into the concept of “Globalization” and to abandon the economic incentive that helped build America’s might: the manufacturing sector.  Rather than invest in building a strong modified version of the manufacturing sector focused on green energy, it is the Tea Party’s Republican Party preventing to spend on re-training the job skills of American workers for such beneficial infrastructure ventures.  Now, such forces (led by Rand Paul) want to ignore the hard years and payments that American workers committed to for a proper retirement in their later years by changing the structure of Social Security.  Throughout recorded history, it has always been the back of the worker that endured the hard manual labor to enrich the few making profit.  Clearly, today is no different from before where such powerful figures are in large office towers rather than castles surrounded by a moat.  

Now is the time for President Obama to make clear that he is not helping special interest destroy the remnants of the American dream.  Like FDR, Obama needs to work around the Republican congress by throwing new ideas after another and implement them into action.  He needs to remind voters that he has tried to work with them but they have refused to maintain and progress the American dream.  Furthermore, the President must be more vocal in pushing his platform rather than refrain from it when the pushing gets tough.  By September 2012 (when the Democratic National Convention will be held at Charlotte, North Carolina), Obama must create the opportunity to define his moment by stating in his speech that he has implemented the programs needed to help the American worker and combat the sluggish economy where the results has been beneficial, especially with a reluctant conservative counterpart working against him.  Hopefully, future generations will Google or YouTube “Obama 2012 Charlotte Speech” to remember how America rose from the dark depths of the economic downfall and the harsh political culture we are witnessing today. 

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html