In a preview of the immigration debate, Congress is getting ready to consider a bill that would provide a path to citizenship to undocumented students who graduate from college, a trade school or join the military.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced in both the Senate and the House last Thursday, in the latest incarnation of an initiative that has failed to pass several times since 2003.

According to a press release from the office of Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.),

The measure would grant conditional legal status to youth who successfully complete high school or equivalent. They then would have six years to graduate from college or a trade school or join the military. If successful in one of those areas, the conditional legal status would become permanent and they could then move towards U.S. citizenship.

“Approximately 50,000 undocumented students graduate from high schools each year; however, without legal status, it is difficult for them to secure a job or afford to attend college,” Lugar said. “This measure will provide these young people with an incentive to move towards permanent residency while pursuing an education or other worthwhile service.

“Undocumented young people usually arrive with their families and have no understanding of their immigration status. They should be encouraged to complete an education and move toward permanent residency.”

The bill has at least some bipartisan support: it was introduced by Lugar and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in the Senate, and by Representatives Howard Berman (D.-Calif.) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R.-Fla.) in the House.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, “versions of the DREAM Act have been considered, without much success, in 2003, 2005, 2006 and as part of a large immigration reform package in 2007.”

As we have reported in the past, immigrant students and other Dream Act supporters hope the bill will pass this time — and they count on an important ally in the White House: President Barack Obama, who expressed support for it during the presidential campaign.

Activists are conducting several campaigns to support passage of the bill. The blog Citizen Orange lists the following:

– The National Council of La Raza is encouraging people to call their Congressional representatives.

– America’s Voice asks people to fax their representatives.

– Change.org is asking for emails to Congress.

– And those interested can also text “Justice”, or “Justicia” for Spanish, to 69866 to be the first to know when the DREAM Act is introduced, courtesy of FIRM.

Information is also available at Dream Act 2009.

While pro-immigrant activists welcomed the news of the bill’s introduction, the immigration-restrictionist camp is getting ready to oppose it.

“The shamnesty crowd is ready to roll again,” conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin wrote. “The illegal alien college tuition discount bill … has been reintroduced.”

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

MEXICO CITY — As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton departed Monterrey, Mexico for Dallas Thursday the consensus among Mexican officials seemed to be that finally the United States has decided to acknowledge its share of blame in the growth of the drug cartels –and the violence they cause.

Thursday's El Universal cover

Mexican politicians greeted with approval and even delight Clinton’s statement that Americans’ “insatiable demand” for narcotics fuels the drug trade from south of the border. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” she had said Wednesday. (Of course the reaction in the U.S. was quite different.)

“A self-critical discourse which has never before been heard from a high-level American official,” said an editorial in El Universal, perhaps Mexico’s most influential newspaper, which ran Clinton’s quotation across its cover yesterday, above the headline:

“Hillary: Unfair To Blame Mexico for Narco“

But Mexicans’ elation was not complete, as two other newspapers highlighted on their covers: while Clinton made the statements Felipe Calderón’s government wanted to hear, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano continued a recent trend of statements about the Mexican situation that are offensive to Mexican ears.

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“In the criminal justice system, anyone arrested is assumed innocent, but in the immigration system, they’re put in detention, and then it’s the individual’s burden to prove they shouldn’t be detained,” Sarnata Reynolds told the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s why you’ll see long periods of detention, because it’s an incredibly high burden.”

Alternatives to detention are significantly cheaper, AI says. (Photo: Amnesty International/Steven Rubin)

Reynolds is one of the authors of yet another report that is highly critical of the detention conditions people –both immigrants and wrongfully-detained American citizens– are subject to when held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The report, Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA, published Wednesday by Amnesty International, adds to other dismal appraisals published in recent weeks. Anticipating its publication, an ICE special advisor on detention said it would be taken into account, and acknowledged the need to change the detention system.

The Chronicle’s Tyche Hendricks writes about the cases of two American citizens from the Bay Area, one born in Thailand, the other from Afghanistan, who were taken into custody by ICE in 2007.

Though the men told immigration officials of their citizenship, neither had papers to prove it, and both languished in immigration custody in Santa Clara County jail –Nasir for 11 months, Simma for seven– before a lawyer finally secured their release.

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By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

One day after the U.S. announced it will beef up security along its southern border, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Mexico today to discuss drug-related violence and economic issues. Clinton’s counterpart, Patricia Espinoza Castellano, said at a Mexico City press conference yesterday that the American measures are “coherent with the fight against organized crime.”

Mexico's Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza. (Photo: AP)

Clinton’s visit comes in advance of a trip by President Barack Obama himself, who will travel south in April to meet Mexico’s head of state, President Felipe Calderón. In response to news of growing drug cartel-related violence in Mexico –and recently in some American cities close to the border– the Obama Administration seems determined to engage and cooperate much more closely with Mexico than the Bush Administration did.

The security measures announced yesterday include sending more immigrations, customs, anti-drug and gun law enforcement officers to the border. In response Espinoza, the Mexican foreign minister, expressed hope for a renewed, closer relationship with Mexico’s northern neighbor.

Espinoza added that the security issue will feature prominently during Clinton’s visit, which she called the start of “a new age of cooperation between both governments.”

She also stated that her government will talk to Clinton about U.S. immigration policies. “We have insisted on an end to raids and to the separation of families (through deportations),” she said. (more…)

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Cardinal George - Photo: AP

It was not the first time a Catholic leader has called for changes to the nation’s immigration policies. But Saturday’s appeal by Cardinal Francis George, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was notable in that it was aimed directly at President Barack Obama and his promise of change.

“I stand with other faith leaders and all of you gathered here today and with every immigrant family in this nation to call on our government to end immigration raids and the separation of families,” George said at a Chicago church where a prayer forum was held to call for renewed debate on immigration reform. “Such reform would be a clear sign this administration is truly about change.”

The cardinal’s call came after a week in which, for the first time in office, President Obama spoke at length about immigration before a mainstream audience; and after he told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus he will address immigration reform soon, with some (unspecified) action to come in the next couple of months.

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At a time when Latino and immigration advocates are closely watching every decision coming from the West Wing, President Barack Obama’s appointment last week of a Dominican American attorney from Maryland as head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division has generated complaints and discomfort.

But Thomas Perez, the nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, and until now the Maryland Secretary of Labor, is not the reason for the griping.

Rather, advocates who are weighing Obama’s commitment to immigration reform are angry about the president’s decision to pass over California’s Thomas Saenz, counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a former vice president of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF.)

Obama’s change of heart –the job was reportedly offered to Saenz and then withdrawn — was interpreted as a lack of will on the part of the White House to engage in a prolonged confirmation fight that could have been a prelude to a Congressional debate on the administration’s immigration reform proposals.

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By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff officers conduct an immigration raid in Phoenix (Photo: AFP)

After a federal program that empowers local authorities to enforce immigration laws was severely criticized in an official report last week, a Homeland Security official told Congress that the agency is working on modifications to the program.

Still, pro-immigrant voices argue the 287g program –named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 that created it– should be shut down altogether.

In an editorial published last Sunday, Los Angeles Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión said,

As we have argued in the past, the (287 g) program should be ended. It is a sham that has only served to destroy families and ruin lives. That said, legislation that mandates efforts between federal immigration and local authorities to detain and deport felons should be fulfilled. But, we need to first close this shameful chapter and start from the beginning.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a report that said the program had expanded without proper oversight. Instead of targeting undocumented immigrants suspected of having committed serious crimes, local law enforcement agencies have arrested thousands for minor infractions, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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