David J. Phillip/AP - Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks about border security during a news conference Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009 in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
In Texas, where border policy and other immigration issues often dominate the news, the DREAM Act has drawn surprisingly little notice.
It was the first of its kind when it passed a decade ago — now about a dozen states have such laws, and one is under consideration in Maryland — and it drew overwhelming support from both parties in the Texas legislature.
During Thursday night's GOP debate in Orlando, Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry said that relationships need to be built with Southeast Asian countries, such as India, to assist in a potential situation where the Taliban had acquired Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
Repeated attempts to repeal it have failed, including one this year. Even some members of the state’s vast tea party network say that they have no problem with it.
“We in Texas have a very long record of being neighbors to Mexico,” said Clint Cook, a spokesman for the Texas Tea Party Alliance. “Yeah, you could say that some taxpayer dollars are being used, but at the same time those kids graduate from college and go on to create money for the economy.”
Last year, Texas education officials estimate that illegal immigrant college students received about $9.5 million in state financial aid. And the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board said that last year more than 16,000 students were in the program — an uptick from previous years but still a small fraction of the more than 1.3 million students attending state colleges and universities.
Critics of the law say they have grown increasingly frustrated as the economy has deteriorated and more illegal immigrants sign up for discounted tuition. They say it takes seats away from qualified legal students and that taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the education of those in the country illegally.
Maria Martinez, executive director of the Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for stricter immigration enforcement and opposes the Texas DREAM Act, speculated that Republicans who take a soft tack on these issues are likely doing so under a misguided attempt at winning Latino votes.
“Politicians tend to try to be all things to all people, and Perry probably thinks if you have a big tent rather than stand on your principles, that will get you elected,” said Martinez. But at a time of high unemployment and dwindling resources, “you just can’t tell me you’ll win any popularity contests as a politician having that position.”
The bill was introduced by Rick Noriega, a former Democratic state representative from the Houston area, who was inspired to act after meeting an ambitious young high school graduate from El Salvador. The graduate was cutting lawns rather than attending college because he had lived in the state illegally since age 14.
Today, the student is a U.S. citizen and “he’s working as an aviation mechanic for Continental Airlines, has a house, is looking for a wife and complains that his taxes are too high,” Noriega said. “If that isn’t American, I don’t know what is.”
In the decade since the law as passed, the landscape on immigration has changed with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, an increase in drug-related crime across the border and rising opposition to illegal immigrants. Backers of the state policy acknowledge that the law would be much less assured of passage in the Republican-dominated Texas legislature today.
And Perry’s tone on some immigration issues has shifted. Early in his governorship, he advocated for more unfettered transportation across the U.S.-Mexico line and health services that could span both sides of the border.
This year, however, he backed a bill requiring a bill barring “sanctuary cities” — communities that adopt policies declining to share information with federal immigration authorities. He approved strict new rules requiring voters to show proof of identification before casting their ballots and made significant cuts to public education. Both were criticized as disproportionately affecting minorities.
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