The first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
In 1982, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented children had the right to attend public schools without charge or impediment, regardless of their immigration status. The ruling raised a question: what if undocumented students, after graduating from the public school system, wanted to attend college?
Perchance to DREAM is the first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act, which made its initial congressional appearance in 2001, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the discretionary program established by President Obama in 2012 out of Congressional failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Michael A. Olivas relates the history of the DREAM Act and DACA over the course of two decades.
With the Trump Administration challenging the legality of DACA and pursuing its elimination in 2017, the fate of DACA is uncertain. Perchance to DREAM follows the political participation of DREAMers, who have been taken hostage as pawns in a cruel game as the White House continues to advocate anti-immigrant policies. Perchance to DREAM brings to light the many twists and turns that the legislation has taken, suggests why it has not gained the required traction, and offers hopeful pathways that could turn this darkness to dawn.
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Should a child whose parents entered the country illegally be granted the privilege of enrolling in school here? ... As University of Houston law professor Olivas writes, there is widespread support both for a path to citizenship and for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act and related legislation, which would both grant legal status to such children and allow them to enter school at resident rates of tuition... An accessible and pointed study in the law of both education and citizenship. (Kirkus Reviews) Legal scholar and advocate Olivas offers a thorough and timely examination of the interwoven legal and political ramifications of court decisions and legislation related to the generation of undocumented immigrant children and youth who were the focus of state and federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Acts and eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status...[This] work will further and aid in-depth research on U.S. history, law, politics of immigration, and higher education. (Library Journal) This book covers the history of the DREAM Act-a legislative proposal to grant temporary residency to immigrants who entered the United States as minors-and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which the Obama administration began in response to Congress's failure to pass immigration reform. University of Houston law professor Michael Olivas discusses how these initiatives have developed over the past 20 years and how the Trump administration's anti-immigration policies have affected those the DREAM Act and DACA were intended to help. (Trial Magazine) Michael Olivas, the nation's leading expert on immigration law and higher education, offers the definitive history of the DREAM Act and DACA. But he does much more, analyzing the long and winding road that undocumented youth have traveled in their struggle for justice and inclusion. Full of arresting observations informed by a lifetime of work as law professor, public intellectual, and pioneering activist, Olivas tells this compelling story with unique insight and flair. - Hiroshi Motomura, author of Immigration Outside the Law Compassionately curated by a prolific expert on both immigration and education law and policy, Perchance to Dream gathers and narrates a complex interplay of U.S. law, politics, and (in)humanity with Dreamers at its core. Exhaustively researched and elegantly told, the complexity of this history gives way to the simplicity of human tragedy that envelops all of us-our many failed chances to honor the dreams of those merely seeking dignity and opportunity in our midst. Through it all, presidents have come and gone, senators have lived and died, immigrants have stayed or been deported, while those of us who believe in compassion have waited, perchance, for hearts and stars to align. - Steven W. Bender, author of Mea Culpa: Lessons on Law and Regret from U.S. History I can think of no better chronicler for the history of the DREAM Act and DACA than Michael A. Olivas. Having lived, researched, and taught during this history, Olivas goes well beneath the surface and uncovers the pains, talents, and hopes that America has witnessed and young immigrants have endured in search of a permanent solution. - Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, author of Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump Offers a breathtaking blow-by-blow account of the DREAMer movement and emergence of the DACA policy. The book ends with the Trump immigration revolution, leaving DACA hanging by a thread. This incredible story thus is not yet done; we can only hope that Michael Olivas writes the next chapter. - Kevin R. Johnson, Dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Law and Chicanx Studies, University of California, Davis School of Law From separating families to banning Muslims to countless other cruelties, President Trump has claimed an almost limitless power to banish immigrants and refugees from our land. The nation's leading expert on immigration enforcement eloquently exposes the illegality of these policies and their devastating impact on immigrant and refugee families. - Stephen H. Legomsky, John S. Lehmann University Professor Emeritus, Washington University in St Louis School of Law Perchance to Dream is a pioneering attempt to chart broadly the many attempts to pass the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act. (Southwestern Historical Quarterly)
The late Michael A. Olivas was William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center and Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at UH. His books include Colored Men And Hombres Aqui: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering; The Law And Higher Education: Cases And Materials on Colleges in Court Third Edition; and Education Law Stories (with Ronna Greff Schneider).
