Dreams have been the subject of great speeches, the foundation of powerful movements, the beginning of prosperous corporations, and throughout history, to many, dreams have been the reason to live one day longer…

To me and thousands of other students, dreaming is all we have left…

This is the reality of undocumented students:

We came with our parents, who risked their lives by embarking in search of the American Dream. We grew as children of this nation, knowing this country as our home, and for many of us, this is our only home. We went to school, playing and learning with other children, hoping and dreaming about college. We graduated from high school, some of us even graduated from college, prepared to serve and work for our community. And now, we do the only thing we have left to do - we dream.

We dream because we believe that everyone deserves the right to access higher education. We dream because we know that the greatest joy of learning is to know that our education will serve others. We dream because we are not ready to give up what we believe is a human right. We dream for so many others who can’t dream and we dream because there is hope: The DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act (S. 729, H.R. 1751) is a bipartisan legislation that has the power to change the lives of thousands of students, and at the same time to improve our communities and empower the whole nation. The DREAM Act is not a free pass for undocumented students, it is an opportunity for us to prove to this nation that we are ready to serve and work for this country. We want to become social workers, business owners, lawyers, teachers, engineers, and doctors. We want to stand side by side with our neighbors to make sure that our communities prosper in these times of economic difficulty. We want to inspire new generations and push forward our nation in the face of any adversity.

For all this reasons we need the DREAM Act and we are ready to work hard to make sure that it passes this year. Now, more than ever, there is an amazing and inspiring national effort to support the DREAM Act. We are doing our part in Washington State. With the strong support of the Latino/a Educational Achievement Project (LEAP) and Alianza Student Coalition, a group of student organizations came together to work on encouraging our congressional delegation to co-sponsor and champion the DREAM Act. Our student coalition, named Education for All Committee, includes student organizations from the University of Washington, Seattle Central Community College, South Seattle Community College, Highline Community College, Seattle School District, and Highline School District.

Through our collaborative efforts we have called and sent letters to all the members of our congressional delegation. We are happy and proud that our two Senators, Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray, are co-sponsors of the DREAM Act. We are also glad that three of our Congressional Representatives, Rep. Jim McDermott, Rep. Adam Smith, and Rep. Rick Larsen, are co-sponsors. However, we have more work to do, there are six more congressional representatives that are yet to become co-sponsors of the DREAM Act. In addition, we also want to encourage board of trustees, board of directors, school boards, business leaders, presidents of educational institutions, and other organizations to join the long list of supporters by officially endorsing the DREAM Act.

For more information or to get involved with the group, please contact us at:
education-for-all-committee@googlegroups.com

We welcome your support and we are ready to work with you. We will continue doing our part.

Let’s keep dreaming with the hope that not far from today we will wake up in our dreams.
United we dream, united we prosper.

Luis Ortega