If you're going to talk against our DREAM, allow a real dialog to happen

This last quarter I took this immigration class for my Spanish Literature Minor and there was a lot of things that I didn't like about it. I could talk about it for hours but I like keeping my posts short so I will only focus a specific one.

The class only allowed for short anti-Dream Act comments.

The first one came when we had Fernando Suárez talk about his son's unfortunate death in Iraq. It was only a short comment he made, but it was enough to plant a seed of doubt in students, and short enough so that no further discussion on it was allowed.

He said something like: (I'm paraphrasing) "I know some of you are fighting for the DREAM Act, but this law would increase further military recruitment for Latinos"

That's it. Moved on to the next point.

A couple of weeks later there was an article which focused only on the military aspect of the DREAM Act. It was written in the syllabus, but never discussed, so an even discussion in the matter did not exist.

Needless to say, I was angry. The professor gets his views passed across to every student in the class without any discussion making it seem as if his view was undisputed, making it correct by default.

There weren't any more mentions of Dream for the rest of the quarter so I relaxed. Final exams were coming but I didn't study Dream since I know it rather well. I go into the final ready to forget this professor and be done with this class. But then I was surprised.

Out of the five words that we had to write definitions for the Dream act was one of them.

Angry is too soft a word to describe what I felt.

I started intensely writing on that subject for what became a two paged response. I gave it everything I knew. From the full name (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), to the exact date it was reintroduced in Congress this year. I wrote personal stories of amazingly brilliant students who hold multiple degrees but are now stuck working as janitors.

And lastly, I wrote about how the advocacy for Dream is a strong student movement in which many of the activists working on it, including myself, would work to educate high school students on all the possibilities the DREAM Act offers, heavily focusing on being able to succeed in higher education.

The fears of the military component of the DREAM Act are legitimate fears, but an even ground should be set for a dialog to take place on it.

If you would like to help pass the DREAM Act with us visit www.dreamactivist.org