Immigrant Student Citizenship and the Role of State-Level Victory: The Illinois DREAM Act

• In Event: Undocumented but Undaunted: The Political and Social Landscape of Latina/o DREAMers

Abstract

This paper examines the civic capacities and citizenship of Latina/o immigrant students through the case study of a recent legislative victory: the 2011 passage of the Illinois DREAM Act. This law was the first enacted in the US to expand the benefits to undocumented students of in-state tuition laws, legislation passed in 13 states to enable students to pay in-state tuition to attend public universities where they live and graduate from high school regardless of their immigration status. What is the Illinois DREAM Act, and how and why was it introduced? What role did undocumented youth and their documented student allies have in the political effort—the bill’s conception, passage, and implementation? Who were the major organizational and individual allies and advocates for the bill’s passage, and what were their roles and relationships to immigrant students? How was the bill received by various legislators? How and why was the bill amended over time? This struggle will be analyzed through two interrelated conceptual lenses: citizenship theory and migrant illegalization. How do the efforts of undocumented students in this struggle fit into citizenship theory as young people, students, Latinas/os, immigrants, and persons who have no legal standing in the US and are vulnerable to deportation? Given that no human being is born “illegal” and that borders and citizenship are socially constructed through war, law, social norms, and racialization, how do Illinois students fight against their construction as “illegal”? Methods used include: observation of lobbying activities for the bill at the Illinois State legislature in Springfield during Spring 2011; interviews with students and allies who participated in or led advocacy through their membership in immigrant student groups, CBOs, and NGOs; and analysis of news articles, websites and internet postings on the bill, related organizing activities, and organizations.

I find that policy struggles for the rights of immigrant youth, including federal and state DREAM Acts, give undocumented students a positive alternative identity to that of “illegal aliens” that places them at the center of US educational aspiration, the American DREAM, and youth civic engagement and activism. These policy efforts also facilitate the formation of undocumented students as an organized political constituency. Yet the repeated failure to pass the federal DREAM Act takes an enormous emotional toll on youth who are fighting for their US futures. State DREAM Acts, and recent efforts to pass extensions, provide key sites for undocumented students to get involved in regional politics, meet legislators, engage in repeated, on-site lobbying activities at legislatures, and meet and organize with immigrant students regionally. By recognizing undocumented students through law, state DREAM Acts also offer official state and college membership and “citizenship” to youth rejected by the nation-state. They also provide important victories that help bolster the spirits of undocumented students in their long and frustrating fight to be accepted not only as members of their families, neighborhoods, schools, communities, cities, and states, but also as formal citizens of the US nation-state.

Author

• Hinda Seif, University of Illinois at Springfield, Assistant Professor