DREAM Act Day

Today Harry Reid is calling a cloture vote against the Republican filibuster aimed at blocking the Defense budget because of rightwing antipathy towards Latinos and their opposition to abolishing Don't Ask Don't Tell. This is more pre-election Republican Party politics of divisiveness, another play to turn ordinary American people against each other for the benefit of the 5% of wealthiest Americans who actually benefit from GOP policies and their agenda of reactionary anti-working family policies. In the past a dozen Republican senators have voted for the DREAM Act, which is supported by Colin Powell and virtually all of the country's military brass:

Bob Bennett (UT)
Sam Brownback (KS)
Norm Coleman (MN)
Susan Collins (ME)
Larry Craig (ID)
Chuck Hagel (NE)
Orrin Hatch (UT)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX)
Trent Lott (MS)
Richard Lugar (IN)
Mel Martinez (FL)
Olympia Snowe (ME)

The best source of updates on the DREAM Act I've found is at America's Voice; they've got everything you need to know, including ringing endosements from papers across the ideological spectrum, from the NY Daily News and L.A. Times to the Salt Lake Tribune and Frank Sharry's powerful nonpartisan endorsement at yesterday Hill:

Passing the DREAM Act should be a no-brainer. It’s a Mom-and-apple-pie measure that enables high-achieving young immigrants to go to college, join our military and earn citizenship.

It enjoys bipartisan support, and is backed by leaders in education, the military, and business, as well as by religious communities such as the Evangelical movement, the Jewish community and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

So, why is the measure controversial?

For one, these young people are in the U.S. illegally, and issues related to illegal immigration tend to generate more heat than light. But let’s be clear: these kids came with their parents and can hardly be held responsible for decisions made when they were still in diapers. They then proceeded to grow up in America and do all that was asked of them-- learn English, finish high school with good grades, and aspire to great things. Do we really want to pursue the alternative to the DREAM Act, which is to deport these valedictorians and ROTC members to countries they don’t even remember?

Evidently, some do. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) took to the Senate floor this week to strongly oppose the bill. He started up the right-wing sound-bite machine, claiming that DREAM was an “amnesty measure” that would “reward bad behavior.” But Vitter, who knows something about bad behavior (and should know even more about glass houses), has the DREAM Act all wrong.

The bill details a rigorous process by which those eligible have to meet stringent age, character, and educational and military service requirements to earn legal status. This isn’t about amnesty, it’s about accountability. The bill sets out a well-designed obstacle course that will produce fine young citizens out of those who make it through.

The second reason the Senate vote has become controversial is that the DREAM Act will be considered as an amendment to the defense bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the DREAM amendment “extraneous” and said it has “nothing to do” with the military. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who up until this Congress was a longstanding co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, argued that DREAM was “totally unrelated to national defense.”

Wrong again. The FY2010-12 Strategic Plan for the Department of Defense’s Office of the Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness recommends passage of the DREAM Act, in order to help the military “shape and maintain a mission-ready All Volunteer Force.” According to Louis Caldera, former Secretary of the Army, “The DREAM Act will materially expand the pool of individuals qualified, ready and willing to serve their country in uniform… I have no doubt many of these enlistees will be among the best soldiers in our Army.“

According to Margaret Stock, (Ret.) Lieutenant Colonel in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve, “Passage of the DREAM Act would directly benefit American national defense by enlarging the pool of highly qualified, US-educated ‘green card’ recruits for the US Armed Forces.”

In fact, the DREAM Act has traditionally been a bipartisan effort. Its lead sponsors in the Senate are Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), and the House bill was authored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), and Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL). In the 108th Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 16-3 in favor of the DREAM Act with support from current Republican Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) (who helped draft the legislation), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and John Cornyn (R-TX). The DREAM Act was also included in comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2006, as an amendment from Senator Graham in the Judiciary Committee, and ultimately 23 Republican Senators voted for that bill.

But this is Washington, and these days the pursuit of power trumps common sense and good policy. Republicans in the Senate are under continuing and intense pressure to block any and all progress on any and all fronts. And so members who in the past have supported the DREAM Act are road-testing excuses. It’s about procedures. It’s about timing. It’s about the vehicle. It’s about politics. But what it really seems to be about is getting to “no” for cynical political reasons.

Okay, so let’s talk politics, and bluntly. Republicans, this may be your last chance with Latino voters for some time. If you can’t find a way to support this limited measure to help young immigrant children attend college and serve in our military, most of whom are Latino, you will be telling Latino immigrants to go to hell. You will make it nearly impossible for your 2012 Presidential nominee to win the 40 percent of Latino votes he or she will need to win back the White House. And you will accelerate your “success” at turning socially conservative Latinos into lifelong Democrats.

Wouldn’t it be better to make the dreams of 800,000 young people come true?

Everyone I know thinks so... except one person. Bob Lord is a friend in Phoenix ran for Congress in 2008 against John Shadegg, one of the most despicable Republicans in the entire House. In a very red district, Bob ran as a progressive, rejecting the DLC/Blue Dog Republican light approach. Although he ultimately fell short, Bob gave Shadegg quite a scare, pulling ahead in the polls three weeks prior to the election. He forced the Republicans to spend over three million dollars defending what was assumed to be a safe seat. Bob think's its a bad idea:

So far, I’m the only progressive I know who thinks the DREAM Act will prove to be an unmitigated disaster. No, I didn’t wake up this morning as a xenophobic Republican. My concern with the DREAM Act has nothing to do with whether the kids who would be eligible for legal status are deserving of it. Of course they are. In fact, they should be granted legal status right away, without having to jump through any hoops.

My concern actually goes back to my campaign. I was asked with surprising frequency my position on the DREAM Act. The first time, I’m embarrassed to say, I needed to be told what the DREAM Act was. My immediate reaction was that I supported the goal of the legislation, but I thought it needed to be broadened. To me, if college and the military were the only options available for immigrant kids to achieve legal status, it would meant that any kid who wasn’t college material would practically be forced into military service. So, I thought that there should be other options, like service in AmeriCorps, or on federal road building projects, or whatever else could be created. The idea of coercing hundreds of thousands of kids to serve in the military just didn’t sit right with me.

The current push for passage of the DREAM Act takes my concern to a new level. Watching Rep. Luis Gutierrez (for whom I have a lot of respect) on one of the MSNBC shows talking about how great this will be for our military, with over one million immigrants being incented to serve, was chilling. Our military adventurism is already way out of control. We waste precious resources on senseless wars, and young, mostly poor or lower middle class, men and women are sent to slaughter. The DREAM Act is virtually guaranteed to take this sick situation and make it unthinkably worse, for two reasons.

First, and foremost, there is a huge disconnect between those who decide to go to war and those who bear the burden of the sacrifice. Right now we have a system where a bunch of rich guys decide whether to send the poor and lower middle class kids to war. Those rich guys can send the troops to war with little worry that their kids, nieces, or nephews, or even the kids, nieces or nephews of any of their friends will share in the sacrifice. And the parents of the poor and middle class kids don’t make
campaign contributions, so their lives mean little to the decision makers. Now, consider what happens to this dynamic if the DREAM Act passes. Instead of rich guys deciding to send poor and middle class kids to war, we’ll have rich guys deciding to send immigrant kids to war. Immigrant kids whose parents largely are non-citizens. Their parents don’t vote. Their parents are too afraid to come out of the shadows to protest. Heck, in the eyes of elitists like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Arizona’s Jon Kyl, the highest and best use of these kids would be sacrificing their lives for the benefit of “real Americans.”

Second, our all volunteer military is limited in terms of the scope of military adventurism it can handle. Recall that at the height of the Iraq war, the military was stretched perilously thin. Prior to the recession, we had severe difficulty maintaining the desired troop levels and had to resort to unsustainable tactics (lowered recruiting standards, the back-door draft, excessive use of reserves) in order to avoid a collapse of the current system. So, a Vietnam type adventure would not be possible. Not without the DREAM Act of course. I’m concerned that those million immigrant recruits Rep. Gutierrez speaks of with such enthusiasm represent the cannon fodder the next George Bush will use when he invades Iran, or Pakistan, or the entire Muslim world for that matter. The DREAM Act may be the thing that makes another debacle on the scale of Vietnam possible. Just think how profitable that will be for the defense industry.

I came of political age during the Vietnam War. My first political work was stuffing envelopes for George McGovern. So I tend to look at things through that lens. In that regard, the resistance to the Vietnam War actually started with the African American community. Because most of the white kids were getting college deferments early on, the burden of sacrifice was falling on the black kids. But they and their families at least were citizens, so they could go to the streets and protest, which they happened to be doing already for other good reasons. How worse would Vietnam have been if the great majority of kids losing their lives were immigrants, whose family members are all non-citizens, possibly no longer living in the country, but in any case afraid to come out of the shadows? If those kids were being used as cannon fodder, there wouldn’t be anyone to stand up for them, and the rich, mostly white, guys making the decision to put them in the line of fire would have no compunction against doing so. There would be no political price for them to pay.

If you don’t think another Vietnam or larger scale war is possible, take a look at World Net Daily, which John Shadegg, Trent Franks, and other Republican wack jobs read on a regular basis. During my campaign, Shadegg was encouraging anyone who would listen to read anti-Muslim screeds like Knowing the Enemy and America Alone. We have Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin whipping their followers into a frenzy over plans to build a Muslim community center. All while the rumblings about stopping Iran from making a bomb continue and the economy sputters. Fact is, the combination of the DREAM Act, a right wing President and Congress, and continued economic malaise has huge potential to result in a major war fought on the backs of immigrants. And how unfortunate would that be if it were progressives that made it all possible by pushing for passage of the DREAM Act.

If you’re still reading, thanks for doing so. And if by chance I’m no longer still the only progressive opposed to the DREAM Act, please, please speak up. It’s not uncommon that well intended legislation has unintended consequences. I really believe that is the case here. But the consequences, while unintended, are totally foreseeable. It would be nice if we could avoid this disaster.

Bob introduced me to another friend in Arizona, Doug Kahn, who writes regularly-- albeit not regularly enough-- on this blog. Doug is helping to finance the defense of several DREAM Act supporters who were arrested in Washington. He doesn't agree with Bob's perspective... not at all. He sent me this last night:

There it is, right in headline Bob Lord wrote for his piece on the Dream Act. It’s what’s known as the Ignoratio Elenchi, the irrelevant conclusion, a logical fallacy commonly used in rational argumentation. Commonly, it’s a red herring, typically used to confuse, to lead away from what is really at stake. We’re not having a debate over “Good Progressive” legislation; we’re talking about whether we should support making it legal, finally, for hundreds of thousands of young people to plan out how they’re going to scrape up money to buy their next meal, and a roof over their heads.

I had lunch with Bob last week, and among other political talk I told him what I was up to, most of which had to do with the Blue America effort to elect progressives as well as our upcoming campaign to get rid of an Arizona Blue Dog, Gabrielle Giffords.

I’ve also been helping Dream Students in their effort to get the DREAM Act brought up in the U.S. Senate. They can’t legally hold a job, so when I was asked to help pay for an Arizona group to travel to Washington DC in July, I pitched in. You might have read that Erika Andiola was arrested after lobbying at Senator Reid’s office, then refusing to leave, and Dulce Matuz did the same at Senator McCain’s office. Dreamers have also staged a sit-in at McCain’s office in Arizona. And as of yesterday, several of them were still camped outside his office in Phoenix, protesting their inability to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces.

I’m having a difficult time understanding what Bob wrote. Not his opinions, but why now? He surely wasn’t thinking about it before we had lunch, and I’m not aware that he’s written anything opposing SB1070 or the other racist crapola going on here in Arizona this year. That really, really bugs me, because Bob isn’t like the other spineless Democrats in this state, the ones who prattle on about the border and drug lords and kidnappings and crime, trying to prove they’re as stupid as the Republicans who run the place.

Yes, I support the Dreamers. They don’t need help planning their next move, and they don’t need gratuitous advice from me or any other documented U.S. citizen. What they need is the right to apply for a job. The ones who have already been jailed, and are in the middle of the deportation process, they need their freedom. (Homeland Security refuses to tell us who they’ve got locked up, and who and how many young people they’re leaning on to sign voluntary deportation agreements.) The families of high school kids need assurance that at least the kids will be able to become citizens someday.

This entire campaign has been theirs from beginning to end. For a long time most immigration reform advocates fought them, saying they had to wait, that the Dream Act was popular so it had to be held back to “sweeten” Comprehensive Immigration Reform. (This should be considered as shameful abuse of innocent young people.) The Dream Act is on the agenda in the Senate for only one reason: these people risked their freedom, risked deportation by taking direct action. They networked, campaigned, and this summer, went and invaded the personal space of John McCain and Harry Reid and the U.S. Senate. This wasn’t on the Democratic agenda in Washington; in fact, until last Monday the House Hispanic Caucus was still refusing to endorse a stand-alone Dream Act.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had people tell me (a lot of this happened at Netroots Nation) that the Dream Students are naive, they don’t understand politics, the overall progressive agenda is the most important thing, and so forth and so on. Just keep that shit to yourselves, if you don’t mind. They’re not naive, they’re desperate. They’ve understood something about life’s priorities that I, at least, needed reminding of; when something is very important, you have to act, not just talk.

Anyway, I’m traveling with Erika and Dulce to Washington next week, because they go on trial October 1st. My assumption is that their charges weren’t dropped because they refused to sign a statement promising to stay away from Capitol Hill. I don’t know what their strategy is, and I don’t need to know. What they’ve been doing so far has worked, and they deserve my support, whatever they decide to do.

UPDATE: DREAM Act and Ending Of DADT Go Down To A Lockstep GOP Filibuster

Every single Republican voted to continue Miss McConnell's ironic filibuster of a Defense Budget that would have enacted the "bipartisan" DREAM Act and ended DADT. It's ironic because Miss McConnell himself was bounced out of the army after just 10 days when he was caught fondling a private's privates. Two putative Democrats, soon-to-be lobbyist Blanche Lincoln and Mark "2-digit-IQ" Pryor, both of Arkansas, voted with the Republicans.