After Vote Fails in Senate, Panel Discusses Immigration

A few hours after the U.S. Senate rejected consideration of a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to be eligible for financial aid and potentially citizenship, policymakers came to campus to speak on the future of immigration legislation.

The federal Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would have repealed a 1996 law limiting financial aid benefits available for undocumented students, and also would have allowed immigrants under the age of 16 who go on to attend college or join the military to move towards legal status.

The proposal, submitted by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., required 60 votes to initiate formal debate. Yesterday it failed with 52 voting in favor and 44 against.

Yesterday’s panel discussion in Wheeler Hall featured State Senator Gilbert Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, who supported the state version of the DREAM Act recently vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Maria Echaveste, Boalt Hall School of Law lecturer and Deputy Chief of Staff under President Clinton from 1998-2001.

“This campus, as the epicenter of the Free Speech Movement and place that has taken up the moral issues of the day, really is a place that should be taking up these issues,” Cedillo said. “Clearly the issues are moral and ethical ones. It seems to be the kind of charge that students here have inherited. It’s what history has handed to them.”

Cedillo focused his remarks on the importance of immigrants for California and the overall “hysteria” surrounding the immigration debate. Echaveste said that the debate primarily centers around questions of race.

“Studies show that we don’t have enough educated workers,” Cedillo said “That’s why we have to import workers. A substantial portion of the young population is undocumented, and we have to educate them for the future.”

Cedillo said that the current immigration debate is often irrational, much like the widespread fear of communists in the 1950s and radicals of the 1960s.

“Legal status has become a proxy for discrimination,” Echaveste said. “We live in a society where we can’t discriminate on race or ethnicity but we can use legal status. How do you determine legal status? We’re going to use what we’ve always done, race, ethnicity, language, accent, someone who looks different.”

Echaveste and Cedillo both criticized Democrats who they said did not support pro-immigrant legislation in fear of losing political support.

“They don’t stand for anything,” Cedillo said of Democrats who do not embrace such legislation. “They don’t believe in anything except for power.”

Eight Democrats voted against the federal Dream Act, most citing constituent discontent as the reason for their vote.

California senator Dianne Feinstein voted in favor of beginning the debate on the bill. Senator Barbara Boxer did not vote.

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