Pulitzer Prize Winner on DREAMing of a Better Future for Children of Immigrants

Today’s New York Times features an amazing, first-person account by journalist Jose Antonio Vargas about his life and career as an undocumented immigrant. Vargas writes about meeting the courageous students who have risked deportation by coming forward to advocate for passage of the DREAM Act, legislation that would provide a path to citizenship to undocumented youth who complete two years of college or military service.

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

Vargas was part of a team of Washington Post reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Virigina Tech shootings. His success, and the promise of other DREAMer students like Mandeep Chahal, an honors pre-med student at the University of California, Davis; UCLA Law School student Luis Perez; and Arizona State mechanical engineering graduate Angelica Hernandez, could be cut short if the DREAM Act does not pass.

Tell your House and Senate members to support the DREAM Act today!

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