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In producing/directing this documentary I’ve talked to a lot of people involved in this struggle…some who are focused on passage of the DREAM Act, others who are trying to put their energy into passage of comprehensive immigration reform and others who are fighting for both.
This is a controversial subject amongst several groups who are supportive of immigration reform and it breaks down like this:
– Those who are fighting for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR), believe that passing bills that address the immigration status of a subset of the 11-13M (or so) undocumented immigrants in the country, could endanger the possibility of passing CIR. They argue that there is only so much political capital and energy to go around and that using that political capital to pass a bill like the DREAM Act, which would only address the immigration status of maybe 1 million undocumented immigrants, would potentially keep CIR from passing and would fail to address the the needs of the rest of the undocumented population. Their position is that if they get political chits from Republicans to pass a smaller bill (like the DREAM Act), those same Republicans could balk at passing CIR and if challenged as non-cooperative (by Democrats) on the immigration issue, they could point back to the DREAM Act to disprove allegations that they do not care about the fate of the immigrant community.
– Those who are fighting for passage of SOME kind of reform, such as the DREAM Act, argue that it looks as though the polarized political environment of today is not supportive of CIR, so why not put our efforts and energy into passing smaller bills that might eventually add up…helping as many people as possible in an incremental way.
– There are, of course, plenty of folks who see the value in both approaches and the political strength of both segments would greatly improve if they decided to unite and cooperate under one strategy…something which may be in the works but is not yet certain.
What do YOU think should happen?