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Senate Fails Immigrant Women on DREAM

Today the Senate blocked the DREAM Act (the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), legislation that would have significantly improved the lives of immigrant women and girls in the United States. By providing access to higher education, DREAM would have fostered the economic potential of a generation of young people and enhanced the ability of the United States to compete internationally for generations. By blocking debate, a minority of Senators stopped this DREAM in its tracks.

The DREAM Act would have offered a path to legal immigration status for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children, who graduate from U.S. high schools and then go on to pursue higher education at our nation’s colleges and universities or join the U.S. armed forces. Though the DREAM Act would have undoubtedly had an impact on all immigrant children, the prospects for immigrant women and families were particularly substantial. An estimated 436,000 girls currently under the age of 18 would have been eligible to benefit from the DREAM Act. Approximately 57,000 young women would have been eligible for lawful permanent resident status as high school graduates with higher education. The Senate’s NO vote on DREAM condemns immigrant girls and young women who have graduated from high school to a life of work in the informal sector of the U.S. economy, a shadow economy with low wages and high rates of exploitation, sexual violence and abuse.

Without access to legal immigration status and its educational opportunities, undocumented immigrant women are destined to a life of economic insecurity that precludes their ability to contribute fully to our communities.  They cannot pursue higher education and cannot serve in the U.S. armed forces.  Perhaps no group will feel the harsh impact of the Senate’s NO vote more than young immigrant women and girls and ultimately their children who whose mothers’ opportunity to pursue their American DREAM was denied.

As a women’s organization dedicated to ending violence against women and enhancing economic opportunity for all women Legal Momentum and like minded women’s organizations will remember this day and this vote. 

Legal Momentum thanks President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, Senator Durbin, Representative Berman, The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and all members of Congress who have worked hard to secure passage of DREAM and we look forward to continuing this struggle in 2011.

Learn more about the importance of the DREAM Act for immigrant women and girls.
Learn more about Legal Momentum’s Immigrant Women Program.
For media inquiries call Leslye Orloff at (202) 326-0040.