We are here to announce that this legislation, Assembly Bill 2597, has been reported out of the Higher Education Committee where it received overwhelming, bipartisan support.
Standing here in support of this important legislation are a number of our Majority bill sponsors and colleagues. In a moment, you will be hearing from the lead sponsor of our DREAM Act legislation, Assembly Member Francisco Moya of Queens, and from the Chair of our Standing Committee on Higher Education, Assembly Member Deborah Glick of Manhattan.
We are delighted to have a number of special guests with us this afternoon:
- Jackie Vimo of the New York Immigration Coalition;
- Jose Davila, representing the Hispanic Federation;
- Natalia Salgado, from SEIU 32BJ;
- Emily Park, representing the MinKwon Center for Community Action in Flushing, New York;
- Kathleen Jordan and Kevin Stump, representing NYPIRG, the New York Public Interest Research Group;
- Natalia Aristizabal of Make the Road New York;
- Yajaira Saavedra of DREAM Scholars;
- And Katherine Tabares, a student at LaGuardia Community College.
To refresh your memories, the Assembly's DREAM Act legislation, if enacted into law, would, for the first time, make immigrant students eligible to receive state scholarships, financial aid through "TAP" (the Tuition Assistance Program), and would enable them to participate in programs such as the Education Opportunity Program, and the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program.
In addition, our legislation would create the DREAM Fund, an initiative that would raise private funds for the purpose of providing private scholarships for eligible college-bound students who have at least one immigrant parent.
What we are doing with this legislation is keeping America's promise, the promise of freedom, equality and opportunity for all.
For more than three centuries, immigrants have come to this country, millions through New York, seeking nothing more than the freedom to make their own way.
You know their stories, the trials and the tribulations, the striving and the sacrifice and the success that inspire us every day.
The immigrant story is also one of overcoming barriers that were erected to keep them from full equality and opportunity. Many of those barriers were knocked down by men and women who have served in the Assembly and in our state government over the decades.
Now it is 2013.
Are the leaders of this state really going to deny these young men and young women, who know no other homeland, the opportunity to achieve and to give back to our state - the way every immigrant generation has done before them - simply because they are undocumented?
Look, the DREAM Act is not about pitting citizens who were born here against those who were not. It is not a question of taking resources from one group and giving them to another.
It's about equal access to higher education for all of our children.
In-state tuition has been available to New York's immigrant youth since 2002. Why deny these students the financial assistance that other students receive?
There is simply no moral or economic argument to justify it.
If you can look at Katherine Tabares and hear her story, and still be unsure, then I just urge you to support the DREAM Act out of a sense of enlightened self-interest, because we need as many of our young people as possible trained for the modern workplace, which is the foundation of our growing economy.
Washington has been debating the DREAM Act for the better part of twelve years. Who knows when they will act?
The States of California, Texas and New Mexico already offer state financial aid to their immigrant youth. It is time that New York took the lead here in the East.
It is a matter of equality. It is a matter of human dignity. It is a matter of keeping the American promise. It is time for the DREAM Act.