Submitted by: Flavia de la Fuente
If I had a nickel for every time I heard somebody say that they should have lived in the ’60s and the ’70s, I could buy premium seats in Pauley Pavilion during basketball season.
Don’t deny it ““ I’ve thought about it too. We think we were meant for the ’60s and ’70s, that we would have been those iconic college students. We were meant for that incredible, mind-blowing, revolutionary period in American history. We would have marched, we would have rallied, we would have gone to listen to Dr. King give a speech about his dream.
I’ve changed my mind. We were meant for today.
Today, there is another dream being deferred. At one point in your UCLA career you will sit next to a fellow Bruin in class or in section or in lab who shares your dream of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer or teacher. The difference? Right now, their dream is drying up, to borrow from Langston Hughes, like a raisin in the sun.
These students are undocumented. Their parents brought them to the United States when they were children ““ 2 years old, 6 years old, 9 years old. They grew up watching American cartoons and eating American cereal. When it’s time to go to college, they either can’t attend, can attend but can’t get financial aid, or they can attend and receive financial aid, but upon graduation they all face the same basic problem. They cannot work in this country. They cannot become the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, or teacher they dreamed of becoming.
At UCLA, there are hundreds of undocumented students. They study math, political science, engineering and English. They’re members of the Den. They live on your floor. They ride the Big Blue Bus. But unlike most Bruins, their dreams meet a harsh reality at graduation. They can’t actually use their degree.
Some go to grad school, some turn to activism, some take the kind of job where employers don’t check their paperwork too closely for proof of citizenship. Few return to their countries of birth, because those countries aren’t their homes. How could these countries be homes, if our undocumented friends and classmates left when they were 2 years old? So they live on the margins, between an America that tells them that those who work hard succeed and an America that pretends they’re invisible.
Earlier in 2009, the DREAM Act was introduced to Congress. The DREAM Act provides a path to citizenship for those who arrive in the country before the age of 16 and obtain at least two years of higher education or give two years of military service. In other words, the DREAM Act is the change students across the country desperately need.
On September 23, there will be 106 different actions in 26 different states, including one at UCLA. There will be rallies, lectures, film screenings and signature drives put on by students and sponsored by coalitions of civil rights organizations nationwide. This is only the beginning ““ the DREAM Act will no doubt come up for a vote within this congressional cycle, and the work has only just begun.
So here’s our chance. In what is probably the greatest civil rights issue of our time, you can be a hero. You can tell your grandchildren, “Yes, I was there.” Yes, you signed the petition. Yes, you called your Congressman. Yes, you went to the rally. Yes, you had the vision, the compassion, the humanity to recognize a great injustice and do something about it. Instead of letting the dream “sag, like a heavy load,” you actually did something, and made the dream explode.
For more information, please visit www.dreamact2009.com.
De la Fuente is a fourth-year political science student.