Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA

by Michael A. Olivas, Bill Richardson (Foreword by)

Overview

The first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

In 1982, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented children had the right to attend public schools without charge or impediment, regardless of their immigration status. The ruling raised a question: what if undocumented students, after graduating from the public school system, wanted to attend college?

Perchance to DREAM is the first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act, which made its initial congressional appearance in 2001, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the discretionary program established by President Obama in 2012 out of Congressional failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Michael A. Olivas relates the history of the DREAM Act and DACA over the course of two decades.

With the Trump Administration challenging the legality of DACA and pursuing its elimination in 2017, the fate of DACA is uncertain. Perchance to DREAM follows the political participation of DREAMers, who have been taken hostage as pawns in a cruel game as the White House continues to advocate anti-immigrant policies. Perchance to DREAM brings to light the many twists and turns that the legislation has taken, suggests why it has not gained the required traction, and offers hopeful pathways that could turn this darkness to dawn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479878284
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	06/16/2020
Series:	Citizenship and Migration in the Americas , #12
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

The late Michael A. Olivas was William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center and Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at UH. His books include Colored Men And Hombres Aquí: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering; The Law And Higher Education: Cases And Materials on Colleges in Court Third Edition; and Education Law Stories (with Ronna Greff Schneider).

Table of Contents

Foreword Bill Richardson ix

1 College Residency, Race, and Reaction: Before 1996 1

2 2001-2010 State DREAM Acts and Litigation 24

3 The DREAM Act in Congress and Federal Developments 38

4 The Aftermath of the DREAM Act Defeats, State Developments 55

5 The DREAM Act and Prosecutorial Discretion: The Birth of DACA 59

6 Undocumented Lawyers, DACA, and Occupational Licensing 86

7 The 2016 Election of Donald Trump, the Rescission of DACA, and Its Aftermath 108

Conclusion: Awakening from the DREAM 133

Acknowledgments 137

Appendix 1 State Laws Allowing Undocumented College Students to Establish Residency, 2019 145

Appendix 2 States Restricting Access to Postsecondary Education for Undocumented/DACA Students through April 2019 149

Appendix 3 Cases Involving Citizens, Residency, Tuition Benefits/Status, and the DREAM Act & DACA (through April 2019) 153

Appendix 4 Immigration-Related Issues: New York State Education Department Licenses 159

Notes 163

Bibliography 271

Index 319

About the Author 333

Editorial Reviews

"I can think of no better chronicler for the history of the DREAM Act and DACA than Michael A. Olivas. Having lived, researched, and taught during this history, Olivas goes well beneath the surface and uncovers the pains, talents, and hopes that America has witnessed and young immigrants have endured in search of a permanent solution."

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

"This book covers the history of the DREAM Act—a legislative proposal to grant temporary residency to immigrants who entered the United States as minors—and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which the Obama administration began in response to Congress’s failure to pass immigration reform. University of Houston law professor Michael Olivas discusses how these initiatives have developed over the past 20 years and how the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies have affected those the DREAM Act and DACA were intended"

Trial Magazine

"From separating families to banning Muslims to countless other cruelties, President Trump has claimed an almost limitless power to banish immigrants and refugees from our land. The nation’s leading expert on immigration enforcement eloquently exposes the illegality of these policies and their devastating impact on immigrant and refugee families."

Stephen H. Legomsky

"Offers a breathtaking blow-by-blow account of the DREAMer movement and emergence of the DACA policy. The book ends with the Trump immigration revolution, leaving DACA hanging by a thread. This incredible story thus is not yet done; we can only hope that Michael Olivas writes the next chapter."

Kevin R. Johnson

"Compassionately curated by a prolific expert on both immigration and education law and policy, Perchance to Dream gathers and narrates a complex interplay of U.S. law, politics, and (in)humanity with Dreamers at its core. Exhaustively researched and elegantly told, the complexity of this history gives way to the simplicity of human tragedy that envelops all of us—our many failed chances to honor the dreams of those merely seeking dignity and opportunity in our midst. Through it all, presidents have come and gone, senators have lived and died, immigrants have stayed or been deported, while those of us who believe in compassion have waited, perchance, for hearts and stars to align."

Steven W. Bender

"Michael Olivas, the nation’s leading expert on immigration law and higher education, offers the definitive history of the DREAM Act and DACA. But he does much more, analyzing the long and winding road that undocumented youth have traveled in their struggle for justice and inclusion. Full of arresting observations informed by a lifetime of work as law professor, public intellectual, and pioneering activist, Olivas tells this compelling story with unique insight and flair."

Hiroshi Motomura

06/05/2020

Legal scholar and advocate Olivas (chair, Univ. of Houston Law Ctr.) offers a thorough and timely examination of the interwoven legal and political ramifications of court decisions and legislation related to the generation of undocumented immigrant children and youth who were the focus of state and federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Acts and eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. The book begins with a brief overview of legal and political debates about immigration status and access to higher education prior to the 2000s. It then examines the period between 2000 and 2016 when state and federal DREAM Acts were passed and litigated, and DACA status was granted during the Obama Administration. Olivas ends by covering the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with a brief conclusion reflecting soberly on immigration politics in the Trump era. Roughly half the volume is made up of multiple appendixes, endnotes, and an extensive bibliography that add value for those wishing to explore the topic further. VERDICT This scholarly work will further and aid in-depth research on U.S. history, law, politics of immigration, and higher education.—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc., Boston

Library Journal

2020-04-13
Should a child whose parents entered the country illegally be granted the privilege of enrolling in school here? It’s a question that has excited much discussion—but that has yet to be decided.

Immigration reform is one of those political third rails that can fry an unwary politician, and the thought of granting citizenship to immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally has divided Congress since at least the Reagan era. And what of their children? As University of Houston law professor Olivas writes, there is widespread support both for a path to citizenship and for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act and related legislation, which would both grant legal status to such children and allow them to enter school at resident rates of tuition. Residence and domicile are legally not the same thing. The last time the DREAM Act had a chance of passing through Congress unscathed was 2007, Olivas suggests, but it encountered difficulties: Sponsor Edward Kennedy became ill, Arlen Specter backed away from it, and when Barack Obama, another sponsor, entered the White House, he propounded “so many major initiatives” that “all the oxygen in the room was being inhaled.” It wasn’t until 2009 that Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, acknowledged the plight of undocumented children, though she placed emphasis on border security instead. Thus it is that the individual states essentially decide the issue for themselves and are likely to continue to do so until truly comprehensive immigration reform is undertaken at the national level, something unlikely to happen under Donald Trump. Indeed, notes the author, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sheltering those undocumented children from deportation, has suffered “death by a thousand cuts” under the hostile eye of the Trump system, and the DREAM Act continues to languish, as it has for two decades.

An accessible and pointed study in the law of both education and citizenship.

Kirkus Reviews

"Perchance to Dream is a pioneering attempt to chart broadly the many attempts to pass the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act."

Southwestern Historical Quarterly