This piece was first published as the foreword to Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA by Michael A. Olivas. Now available in paperback, the book offers a detailed account of the history of immigration reform throughout the past two decades, focusing on the DREAM act (The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).
鈥�Life is a Dream,鈥� translated from the Spanish by Michael A. Olivas:
I dream that I am here
of these imprisonments charged, and I dreamed that in another state I saw myself more flattering.
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the greatest good is small:
that all of life is a dream,
and dreams, are only dreams…
In 2005 in New Mexico, like in the country today, we were at a cross-roads. There was escalating violence at our borders, and many were fleeing in search of a better life here. We could choose to pass laws that helped integrate and support our immigrant community or laws that hindered and hurt them. I have always felt that there is a decided positive in biculturalism and living and working together, so that is where I, with Michael鈥檚 help, directed my legislative energy. In addition to the residency law, as governor I also signed legislation to make undocumented immigrants eligible for driver鈥檚 licenses and to expand their access to health care.
Those legislative battles were not easy. Immigration was a divisive issue, one that never was popular, even in a predominantly Hispanic state like New Mexico. Those fights with Michael were well fought, but they wouldn鈥檛 have been necessary at all had Congress ever stepped up to the plate to pass immigration reform. And we are still waiting. That鈥檚 why Michael鈥檚 book is critical reading at this time in our nation鈥檚 history. The Hispanic population has been the principal driver of US population growth since 2000. Yet it still feels like our voices are not being heard in the political and social realm. Democrats鈥攎y party鈥攐ften rely on Latino votes, though once elected they seem all too willing to use DREAMers as political pawns. The path to citizenship becomes a bargaining chip on the negotiation table…
The DREAM Act, first introduced in 2001, was no closer to passage than it had been almost two decades earlier. DREAMers had incontestably kept their part of the bargain that had been forged with their government: they studied, worked hard against all odds, participated in civic affairs like the citizens they longed to become, began to acquire license and professions, paid their taxes, and trusted that their doing so would earn them the chance to adjust their status. If anything, success almost within their grasp gave them the cruelest form of thwarted hope: dashed dreams and an exquisite sense of betrayal…
DREAMers, by definition, lack the legal status that would accord them the right to vote. Nonetheless, they were very active, well organized, and intent on seizing control of their own narrative and in serving as the resistance to the Trump administration and Congress, which had failed them in reaching their ultimate goal鈥攁 comprehensive immigration reform bill or, failing that, a legislative answer for improving their own liminal status鈥攅ven if they could not reach for sufficient levers that might regularize the status of parents who lacked the semifirm but slippery footing accorded them by DACA…
Even without any clear path after DACA status, these youths received Social Security numbers, employment authorization, a chance to leave the country and return under advance parole, and, perhaps most important, 鈥渓awful presence,鈥� which froze their immigration transgressions so that they could remain in the United States and not be deported while in good DACA standing. This development swamped all previous efforts to serve DREAMers, as the undocumented students had come to be known, so the book鈥檚 gestation period entered its second life. Undocumented immigrants were becoming transformed and reconstituted into DACAmented adults in a growing and thriving enterprise, one that gave hope to observers that its successes were the trial run for a DREAM Act that might legalize their inchoate status and ripen into a form of permanency, perhaps a preliminary legal step not unlike the 1986 IRCA prelude to lawful permanent residency and then full US citizenship…
Observers are left with the clear impression of the need for recodification or restatements, profession by profession, especially as employment and immigration laws continue to slide along tectonic plates, causing gaps and ridges. One of the glories of the US immigration system is not that it breaks down or is unfair鈥攂oth of which are demonstrably accurate鈥攂ut that it works well much of the time. Given the early returns on occupational licensing and the intersection with immigration, there is reason to hope. There is surely reason to improve…
DACA only came into existence thanks to the brave young people who began a campaign of sit-ins and marches to bring attention to the plight of immigrant youth in this country. Many of these outspoken youngsters risked deportation and separation from their families to come forward and fight for a more secure existence. Their story, no matter how it ends, deserves to be on the shelves along with other Americans鈥� history.
The late Michael A. Olivas was William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center and Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at UH. His books include Colored Men And Hombres Aqu铆: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering; The Law And Higher Education: Cases And Materials on Colleges in Court Third Edition; and Education Law Stories (with Ronna Greff Schneider).
The late Bill Richardson was an American politician, author, and diplomat who served as the 30th governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011.
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