You graduate high school with good grades. You have avoided gangs, drugs, and other negative influences. You attend church regularly with your family who have sacrificed much to give you opportunities they did not have. You are responsible and gifted, with a strong work ethic.

In fact, you are one of America’s rising stars, ready to continue your education and earn a college or university degree in the state in which you have lived most of your life.

Your language skills are strong — in fact, you are bilingual. You have little or no memory of living anywhere other than the United States and English is your primary language. Yet you are proud of your Hispanic heritage, of its culture and its language.

You are self-motivated, and have much to offer later in the profession or specialty of your choice.

You have heard the call of your country’s need for prepared bright minds to move us in the future. You are ready to take the next step.

STOP RIGHT THERE!

You are not allowed to fulfill the American Dream because we the American public don’t like your parents. To us they are criminals. In fact so are you. We don’t want you or your parents here. And of course you don’t deserve an education beyond your high school diploma. After all, where are you going to work?  In short, we reject anything you might wish to offer our country.  Furthermore, you cannot defend your country in military service.  Don’t you get it?  You have no value to us– we the descendants of European interlopers, or else immigrants from other nations.

This is exactly the message which our non-documented young residents are hearing. It is also the reason for the Dream Act, which continues to face steep opposition even though the House of Representatives has passed it, and the President supports it.

The DREAM Act corrects one of the most-egregious flaws of a badly broken immigration system,” Obama said. “A flaw that forces children who have grown up in America, who speak English, who have excelled in our communities as academics, athletes or volunteers to put their lives and talent on hold at a great cost to themselves and our nation.”  Politico

With the Republicans’ interest on preserving the tax-cuts for the wealthy, there seemed little chance of moving the Dream Act through the lame-duck legislation.

Still, supporters of the bill are optimistic.  Frank Sharry of America’s Voice explains:

In fact, this past Thursday the DREAM Act was given new life by a deft procedural move by Majority Leader Harry Reid.  Following that historic House vote Wednesday night–which caught many pundits in Washington by surprise–Reid made the strategically smart decision to table the Senate bill in order to hold a vote on the House-passed DREAM Act in the coming weeks.

At best, this the hope of many young American Dreamers, moves to the bottom of the list of items which the legislators had hoped to pass in this session.

Note: Approximately two years ago, I wrote a related article about the  young Hispanics who ARE American citizens, but whose parents (and sometimes siblings) are undocumented residents, titled “Does US Citizenship Mean Anything?”  Although native born US citizens, they share many of the burdens of their undocumented counterparts, as many anti-immigrant advocates also question the legitimacy of their citizenship.