Dream Act Passes Senate Judiciary Committee By Large Majority

IMMIGRATION LAW & POLICY

Congressional Developments

DREAM ACT PASSES SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE BY LARGE MAJORITY
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 17, No. 7, November 24, 2003

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 16 to 3 to approve the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2003 and report it to the Senate floor, but not before adopting some changes opposed by immigrant and education advocates. Seven out of the ten committee Republicans and all Democrats voted in favor of the bill. The strong vote increases the odds that the DREAM Act will be enacted during this session of Congress, perhaps in the spring.

The DREAM Act (S. 1545), which was reintroduced in late July of this year, addresses the plight of young immigrants who have spent their formative years in the U.S. but whose future hangs in the balance as a result of current immigration law. Presently, the immigration status of children is dependent on their manner of entry into the U.S. or their parents' immigration status, and generally they are unable to adjust to legal status unless their parents manage to do so. After they grow to young adulthood, immigrant students are treated the same as undocumented immigrants who arrived as adults, with no opportunity to gain legal status absent exceptional circumstances. No consideration is given to the fact that they have grown up here, nor to any of their own actions. It does not matter whether they have remained in school or stayed out of trouble. The DREAM Act would offer these U.S.-raised youngsters a mechanism by which to obtain legal status.

The changes made by the Senate Judiciary Committee were introduced as an amendment during the committee markup by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), two cosponsors of the bill. Explaining his motivation for offering the amendment, Grassley said that he had been "sold on this bill for one reason-education, education, education" and had felt "somewhat cheated by the overreach of the legislation" before it was amended.

The following are the most important changes included in the Grassley-Feinstein amendment as adopted by the committee:

It would require schools to enter DREAM Act beneficiaries' names into the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a computerized database that now is used exclusively to track foreign nonimmigrant students who come to the U.S. to attend college on international student visas;
It would eliminate the community service option, so that all DREAM Act students would be required to attend at least two years of college or spend two years in the military before being granted unconditional lawful permanent resident (LPR) status;
It would eliminate DREAM Act students' eligibility for federal student aid grants, including Pell grants. (However, as passed by the committee, the bill retains the provision that would allow them access to work study and student loans.)

The Grassley-Feinstein amendment came as a surprise to advocates. It was not circulated to the committee until late in the evening before the markup, and Feinstein did not announce her cosponsorship until the markup itself. As a result, there was not adequate time to formulate an effective response to the most problematic changes, some of which appear sensible on the surface but do not stand up to scrutiny.

Despite the changes, immigrant and education advocates are encouraged by the overwhelming and strongly bipartisan committee vote to report the DREAM Act to the Senate floor, and they are hopeful that the most egregious changes made by the Grassley-Feinstein amendment can be revisited or moderated as the bill moves towards final passage.

The following details the changes made to the DREAM Act as it was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 23, 2003. The summary of the DREAM Act on NILC's Web site has been updated to reflect these changes.

COMMUNITY SERVICE OPTION

The DREAM Act would set up a process by which undocumented young people could become lawful permanent residents of the U.S. A student who has grown up in the U.S., has good moral character, and has graduated from a U.S. high school would be granted "conditional" status, normally for six years. At the end of the six years, the student would be granted full LPR status if certain conditions were met. Under the previous version of the DREAM Act, the condition could have been met in any of three ways: (1) by going to college for at least two years; (2) by enlisting in the military for at least two years; or (3) by performing at least 910 hours of community service. The Grassley amendment eliminates the community service option, so that all DREAM beneficiaries would be required to either attend college or enlist in the military, or else face deportation. The bill provides for hardship exemptions from these requirements, however.

In defending the amendment, Grassley and Feinstein argued that the 910-hour requirement would be minimal-only three hours per week if spread across all six years. "Volunteerism is good for the community as a whole," said Grassley, "but the purpose of this bill is to enhance the productivity of the individual coming here who is in a situation through no fault of their own, and education is the way of doing it." This change is ironic in that it would, in essence, require college attendance (or military service) for a group of young people who currently are effectively precluded from higher education (and also from military service). Compulsory college attendance is problematic for a number of reasons. College is not the best option for all young people, and not everyone is prepared or financially able to attend college.

Higher education has never been compulsory in the United States. According to the census, only about half of all adult Americans over age 25 have ever attended any college, and less than 30 percent of all Hispanic adults over 25 have.

SEVIS REQUIREMENT

The Grassley-Feinstein amendment would impose a new requirement that schools enter students helped by the DREAM Act into the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System. SEVIS, a computer tracking system for the approximately 500,000 international students, scholars, and scientists in the U.S. on temporary (F and J) visas, was created by Congress in 1996. Participation by all colleges with nonimmigrant international students was mandated by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. Schools and universities enter the name and other data for all visiting students into the SEVIS system and are responsible for ensuring that the students remain in compliance with the academic requirements for their visas.

It makes no sense to adopt SEVIS for tracking DREAM students. SEVIS is a trouble-plagued and controversial system intended to prevent misuse of student visas-e.g., by potential foreign terrorists. Most DREAM students will have never known any other home but the United States, so there is no reason whatsoever to link them with nonimmigrant visitors arriving from overseas with the express intent to do harm. Moreover, the SEVIS system is a costly burden on colleges, which generally charge international students between $100 and $350 to defray their costs for having to participate in it. Such charges would be much more difficult for most DREAM students to bear than for international students, many of whom come from privileged or wealthy families.

Moreover, the entire SEVIS program will likely have to be reconfigured to accommodate DREAM students, who are not "visiting" and therefore would not possess the information that SEVIS currently requires, such as an F or J visa number, a foreign address, etc. The SEVIS program tracks enrollment and grades, because a student who falls below certain academic standards or drops out loses the right to remain in the U.S. There are no such requirements for DREAM students, other than that they must complete at least two years of credits within six years of obtaining conditional permanent resident status. The changes in SEVIS that would be needed to comply with the Grassley-Feinstein amendment would stress a system that is already fragile, compromising the SEVIS program's antiterrorist purpose.

FEDERAL GRANTS

Under current law, LPRs, refugees and U.S. citizens are eligible for all federal higher education grants and loans, including Pell Grants, while undocumented immigrants and many miscellaneous categories of immigrants are ineligible. Under the original DREAM Act, beneficiaries also would have been eligible for these federal higher education loans and grants once they were granted conditional resident status, but the Grassley-Feinstein amendment would eliminate eligibility for federal grants.

This change would create a situation wherein students would be required to go to college to avoid deportation but would not receive the financial help they may need to be able to do so. In support of this provision, Feinstein argued that she did not want "to be in the position of denying a legal person a Pell grant to give it to somebody that is here illegally." In fact, no such trade-off would be required. Rather, the DREAM Act would effect a small increase in the amount of money available for Pell grants, about $35 million per year in a program with an annual budget of about $11 billion. And the return on investment for this expenditure would be enormous. Beneficiaries would earn more money, pay more taxes, and cost less in social services and criminal justice expenditures.

OTHER CHANGES

Retroactivity. The committee modified the "retroactivity" provision of the DREAM Act so that beneficiaries who have already satisfied the education or military service options before the act's date of enactment would be required to wait at least three years in conditional status before qualifying for full LPR status.

Under current law, with a few exceptions an immigrant can obtain LPR status without going through any conditional status period. The most common exception is adjusting status via marriage to a U.S. citizen. An individual who adjusts status via marriage must endure two years of conditional status before becoming an LPR, and, in most respects, conditional status is identical to LPR status. After the conditional period, the immigrant must apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to have the condition removed and full LPR status granted.

The DREAM Act contains a similar conditional period, only it is six years long and has different requirements (as described above). Originally, the retroactivity section of the bill provided that an immigrant who, before the date of the law's enactment, had already satisfied the requirements for lifting the condition could obtain full LPR status without the requisite six-year conditional period. The committee modified this retroactivity provision so that an immigrant who, before the date of enactment, has already satisfied the requirements for lifting the condition would still be required to wait three years in conditional status before qualifying for full LPR status.

High School Graduation from U.S. Schools. The committee clarified that the high school graduation requirement must be satisfied by graduation from a high school in the U.S. (The DREAM Act would require a student who has grown up here and stayed out of trouble to graduate from high school before becoming eligible for relief, and this provision clarifies that the high school in question must be a U.S. school.)

List All Secondary Schools Attended. The committee added a new requirement for DREAM beneficiaries to list all secondary education institutions they have attended in the U.S. on the petition to lift their conditional status.

The DREAM Act would require a beneficiary who has been granted conditional status to file a petition to remove the condition after the six-year conditional period has ended. The petition would have to contain various facts and information, such as that the immigrant has maintained good moral character during the conditional period. This provision of the Grassley-Feinstein Amendment would require DREAM Act beneficiaries to list all secondary education institutions they have attended in the U.S.

Although many advocates are disappointed with the weaker bill that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, most are committed to maintaining their support for the DREAM Act, with the intention of working to improve it if it goes to the Senate floor early next year.