The Dream Act came out of California 16 years ago. It's still the bill Democrats want to be a model for DACA's replacement
LA Times by Sarah D. Wire 9/17/2017
Sixteen years ago, Downey Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard helped file legislation that would have allowed people brought to the country illegally as children to stay in the United States.
That bill became the Dream Act. Its failure to pass Congress led to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Trump this month decided to end as he urged Congress to find a replacement.
If Democrats have their way, DACA’s replacement will look a lot like what Roybal-Allard proposed in 2001. Democratic leaders emerged from a meeting with Trump on Wednesday night saying Roybal-Allard’s bill, which includes a path to citizenship for some immigrants in the country illegally, must be part of Congress’ plan to protect DACA recipients.
Roybal-Allard said she started working on the legislation after a late-1990s conversation with a worker in her office who was worried about a college friend living in the country illegally.
“She was telling me about her friend who had graduated from college and could not get a job, and that she was always living in fear of being deported,” Roybal-Allard said.
Roybal-Allard teamed up with now-former Democratic Los Angeles Rep. Howard Berman and now-former Utah Republican Rep. Chris Cannon. They proposed a bill that would have given permanent legal status to some young immigrants and removed a ban on nonresidents using student aid. It died in committee without a hearing. The first Los Angeles Times article on the initiative focused on how the bill would make it easier for students in the country illegally to pay for college.
It was the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who changed its drab title, the Student Adjustment Act, to the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the Dream Act. The title became a rallying cry for people brought to the country illegally as children, and they began calling themselves “Dreamers.”
Durbin’s name change helped the bill catch fire because it spoke to much more than paying for college, Roybal-Allard said.
"I think it represents what every young person has, their dreams for the future, their dreams to go to college or whatever their aspiration is,” Roybal-Allard said. “That one word encompasses all of that, and I think that’s why it’s caught on.”
The bill, which has evolved from emphasizing financial aid for higher education to focusing on a path for citizenship for children who were brought here illegally, has been filed again and again. In 2006 and 2007, the bill’s text was inserted into a bipartisan immigration policy overhaul that failed. In 2010, a version that outlined details such as application fees and work requirements for Dreamers passed the House, but a companion bill died in the Senate.
More:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-dreamers-california-daca-20170917-story.html
