Immigration Article of the Day: René Galindo, Undocumented & Unafraid: The DREAM Act 5 and the Public Disclosure of Undocumented Status as a Political Act

 
René Galindo, Undocumented & Unafraid: The DREAM Act 5 and the Public Disclosure of Undocumented Status as a Political Act  (University of Houston Law Center, IHELG Monograph 11-02).

Abstract The political advocacy of undocumented students was apparent during 2010 through demonstrations across the country in support of the DREAM Act. Among those demonstrations was the national Coming Out of the Shadows event held in Chicago in March 10 where students publicly disclosed their undocumented status as part of the Undocumented & Unafraid campaign. On May 17 a historic even occurred when five students, now known as the DREAM Act 5, practiced civil disobedience by staging a sitin inside Senator McCain’s office in Tucson. Three of the students arrested were undocumented immigrants. The present study examines the public disclosure of undocumented status as political act on the part of undocumented students. Letters written by four of the DREAM Act 5 to the president, press media reports and interviews, and information from student advocacy blogs were examined. The primary data source, the students’ letters, were considered testimonios since they contained the students’ coming out statements, their migration stories, explanations of their civil disobedience, and appeals for President Obama’s support of the DREAM Act. The analysis focused on the function of the public disclosure of undocumented status in challenging the societal exclusion, invisibility, and dehumanization of undocumented immigrant students.

Professor Galindo teaches at the University of Colorado Denver.

KJ