It’s always nice to hear from our supporters on the ground.

Emily took the time to write and send this to us, and we encourage you to do the same!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

You have been tagged in this note because you have been identified as a leader in the community who has the potential to make a big impact in the lives of our immigrant neighbors and students. Please take just a few minutes to read the note below:

I had the unique opportunity to attend Arkansas’ first ever DREAM Camp March 6-7. Thanks to our trainers from the North Carolina United We Dream campaign, the DREAM Camp successfully educated our group on the need for immigration reform as well as trained us on how to take action to support reform. Sixty participants ages 16 to 60 attended the DREAM Camp, and over half of these participants were undocumented students from Arkansas high schools. Being a tall blonde born and raised a white suburban neighborhood who has experienced few barriers to achieving my dreams, I was definitely a minority among the attendees.

Prior to this training, my interest in immigration reform was primarily academic. I have spent the last several months researching the history of immigration control and its contemporary consequences for my master’s thesis, and, as a result, have treated immigration reform as a logical argument to be won. Though I understood real people are affected by our ineffective immigration system, my arguments for immigration reform were typically issues of the head. I focused on statistics and facts when trying to convince others we need to change our current immigration system, and though the numbers are important, my experience at the DREAM Camp opened my eyes to the true impact a racist, sexist, and classist immigration system has on our immigrant neighbors and friends.

At the DREAM Camp, I was humbled as I talked face-to-face with dozens of courageous Arkansas students who shared their very personal immigrant stories with me. In fact, many of these students “came out” for the first time ever and publicly identified themselves as undocumented. Their stories were emotional as they spoke of forced family separation, police brutality, racism in their classrooms and neighborhoods, and legal restrictions preventing them from achieving their dreams. Yet their stories were hopeful and brave as they looked forward to a life post-immigration reform that would be filled with more opportunity for them and their future children. After hearing their stories, immigration reform was no longer a matter of the head for me. It became a matter of the heart. Immigration reform is personal. Very personal. For example …

I met Luis. Luis has just graduated from the U of A with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was top of his class in high school and the first to graduate from college in his family. Both he and his mother are filled with a sense of pride for his accomplishments and look forward to the day he will attend medical school, but unfortunately because Luis crossed the border without legal documentation when he was five years old—a journey he made in order to reunite with his mother after three years of separation—he is unable to apply for the financial aid needed to pay for medical school or obtain a medical license after graduation. At five years old, his only dream was to see his mother again. Now, his dream is to go to medical school, but the only way he will achieve this dream is to obtain financial aid, something for which undocumented students in Arkansas are not eligible. The passage of the DREAM Act is only hope for Luis as well as for thousands of other driven, passionate, and hopeful undocumented students.

Luis’ story is one of many that would be positively affected by the passage of the DREAM Act. A student from Heritage High School in Rogers, Arkansas came up to me and said, “To see ‘white’ people here gives me hope. I now know that people outside of my Hispanic community understand my challenge. It gives me hope that we are fighting for something bigger than ourselves…and that people are listening.” She plans to graduate high school with straight A’s and looks forward to getting her college degree, but she, too, is undocumented after traveling with her family to Arkansas when she was just a toddler.

I write this letter to remind all of us of just how personal immigration reform is. It is easy to remain in the comfort of our privileged lives, but when so much injustice is happening right here in our communities, we MUST cross the border between apathy and passion, inaction and action, and stand up in support of our immigrant neighbors and friends. The sixty people who attended the training this past weekend are motivated more than ever for change. We will be organizing local events, rallies, marches, and vigils around the state of Arkansas in order to spread awareness for the need for immigration reform, eradicating 287G, and passing the DREAM Act. In the next several months, similar efforts will be organized nation-wide from Florida to D.C. to California to Arizona. Will you join us?

I ask you to join me in supporting our immigrant neighbors by 1) educating yourself on the issues, 2) spreading the word to your friends and family, 3) contacting your public officials and encouraging them to support immigration reform, and 4) participating in the many upcoming immigration reform events in NWA. In addition, May 18 is a very important primary in which we will vote for our future political representatives. Make sure you vote for candidates who are supportive and understanding of immigrant rights.

SAVE the DATE: March 21st a rally will take place at the Jones Center in Springdale. Members of NWA will come together to show our solidarity to the reformers in D.C. who will be marching on the same date. More information will be coming soon.

I am dedicated to raising awareness in my community about the critical need for immigration reform. Will you join me?

You can read more about the DREAM Act and the efforts of Reform Immigration for America at the following links:
DREAM Act website and petition: http://dreamact.com/?p=56
DREAM Activist website: http://www.dreamactivist.org/
Reform Immigration for America: http://reformimmigrationforamerica.org/
Trail of Dreams: http://www.trail2010.org/blog/

Sincerely,
Emily Ironside
Arkansas Dreamer
“Si se puede”

In this video, Jessica Lee interviews University of Arkansas Chancellor G. David Gearhart about the Dream Act.

Gearhart supports the DREAM Act and reveals that there may be 18 students at the University of Arksansas who are undocumented. And the university–instead of shunning these students–treated them like residents for in-state tuition rates. When they could no longer do that due to state laws, he went to the donors and benefactors of the university to pay the differential.

Thank you Mr. Gearhart for supporting higher education for all students.

Why should anyone in Arkansas support SB799? Because it is one attempt at reducing poverty in the state of Arkansas by promoting educational opportunity and investment in youth that want to achieve and contribute to their community.

Special props to Ana Aguayo, University of Arkansas Junior, for highlighting the realities facing undocumented students at her own high school in Springdale when she graduated:

“Of that graduating class, I had 35 friends without documents. Of those 35 friends, 10 were at the top of the class. AP classes, community service, well-rounded. They deserve more than anything to be in my place, more than anything, because they have worked hard.”

Check out the expert testimony on SB 799

More Videos

Rep. Joyce Elliot is our hero this week for reviving her 2005 bill with a spirited 11-point defense -

1. SB799 has NO effect on Arkansas citizens to attend college. None.
2. It is not illegal for undocumented students to attend college in Arkansas. It is just prohibitively expensive because they must pay 2-3 times the tuition of other students.
3. SB799 does only two things: (1) Allows undocumented students to use their own money to pay tuition at the in-state rate and (2) requires them to sign an affidavit declaring their intention to legalize their immigration status. There are NO scholarships involved.
4. These students are in Arkansas because of decisions made by their parents/guardians and have been here all or most of their lives. Like us when we were children, these children could not control their parents’ actions. “Staying behind” is not an option for children.
5. Many of them are undocumented American citizens because they were born in the United States/Arkansas. Undocumented is NOT the same thing as illegal.
6. These students are Americanized. Arkansas is what they know as home. For them, the reality is there is no place to go back to. They will remain in Arkansas (educated or not), so doesn’t good policy dictate equipping them to be contributors to rather a drag on our state resources?
7. The Supreme Court case Plyler vs. Texas made public school education mandatory for undocumented students. To deny them reasonable access to higher education amounts to turning our backs on years of financial and social investment.
8. Eleven states, including Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, have passed laws allowing undocumented students to access to higher education at their in-state tuition rates.
9. Arkansas cannot realize its economic goals while deliberately creating a whole class of under educated people by denying them access to a college education.
10. By failing to enact comprehensive immigration reform, Congress has handed this problem to the states. In the interest of Arkansas’s future prosperity, we cannot afford to block reasonable access to higher education for any Arkansas high school graduates.
11. SB799 is certainly not perfect. It is our opportunity as policy makers to take charge of the kind of future our children and we will have.

The federal statute in question during instate-tuition debates is 8 U.S.C. § 1623, which 10 states have already circumvented. Legal opinion on whether instate-tuition for undocumented students violates that federal statute is unresolved and varied at best. ICE has already clarified that it is not against the law for undocumented students to attend institutions of higher learning. In the past, both the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the University of Central Arkansas in Conway have offered undocumented students in-state tuition rates.

Check out Chris Burkes -

SB 799 is common sense policy for a poor state that desperately needs more people with college degrees. After all, educational attainment leads to higher economic output. Why would any person who loves their community, state and country oppose that? No, don’t give us ‘illegal is illegal’ — give us something with substance and worth that helps, not hurts, the future of the state and country.