Education Week: Students Want DREAM Act to Become a Reality: The student body president at Fresno State. The drum major at UCLA. Student senators, class presidents, team captains and club officers at community colleges.
Scores of student leaders across California are illegal immigrants who came to this state as children.
With Congress expected to vote soon on immigration reform that would give these students a pathway to legal status, a new generation of scholars who were raised in California but not born here are shedding their secrecy and speaking about their lives.
They have a sense of urgency. If the bill, known as the DREAM Act, does not pass before a more conservative Congress takes power in January, it is unlikely to pass for years to come.
'At first my parents said, 'What are you doing? You're risking so much,' ' said David Cho, the UCLA drum major. 'But I told them, 'It's not only me. There are thousands of students like me trapped in a broken system. Unless our generation speaks out, the politicians won't tackle it. They have to see our faces.' '
