Money, Money, Money

Financial aid has proven to be a tough road bump for many Dreamers. However, it will now seem even more dim for these students as Obama's new budget plan for 2011 cuts about 4.9 Billion dollars from the Department of Education. If finding money for college seemed hard enough already, then be prepared for a tougher road. Of course, the possibilities of getting scholarships are still avialable, but it's definitely a lot more tougher now that many US citizens will also have a tougher time getting money since federal aid will now decrease.

The good news is that Senator Dick Durbin announced that he will reintroduce the DREAM Act, although this new version of the bill is expected to narrow down the number of eligible students. All I can say is that undocumented students must now keep trying harder to stand out and give Congress and the rest of America a reason to pass this bill. Hopefully they will soon realize the importance of an education.

Last Quarter

Now that I'm reaching the final steps of my project, I'm starting to see that time goes by a bit too fast sometimes. I still haven't reached most of my goals, but I feel that this type of work definitely requires a lot of time and dedication. An advocate can have a rough time. So far I haven't had any negative feedback, only a couple of suggestions on how the bill could be improved, such as ensuring it acts more as an earned right rather than a gift.

The Facebook page is going well; so far I have 100 members in my group. The only problem was that I made the facebook a group instead of an actual page. I don't invite people to the group, I put them in the group. It's a different process and my group can't be "suggested" or "invited" to other friends.

The only thing that worries me is the time, but hopefully the relaxed classed will give me more time to focus on the project.

Facebook Update

Finally, Facebook will be available to all students during the school week, so I can actually take on the task of building a facebook page on the DREAM Act. I had already found a DREAM Act Houston page, however the page did not have accurate e-mail adresses and information, so I could not really contact the admin of that page. I decided to make my own page then, realizing that I could easily get about 200 members from school and friends, and then hopefully the group would reach others through them. Hooray for networking!

So first of all I decided to link both my blog and my webs to the page for easy access and media circulation. I'm going to try and keep this page updated as much as possible. Hpefully once I get a reasonable amount of members I can do a sort of group rally or something of that magnitude.

Going online

Recently I've been thinking about making a facebook page and calling it "DREAM Act Houston". I'm not sure if someone has already made a group similar to that, but I wouldn't mind collaborating with this person. I think it would probably be one of the fastest ways of getting my message out there since almost everyone uses Facebook today. I would probably be posting up links and any articles I found on the web. What I really look forward too is getting a certain meeting or event once I get a big enough group and do some rallying. Let me know what you all think.

DREAM Act Presentation

I did a presentation on the DREAM Act project last year, mainly focusing on the informative aspect of it. Let me know what you all think.

Obama Reminds Legislators that DREAM Act is Still Alive

Yesterday, Obama took a little chunk off of his State of the Union address to remind both Republicans and Democrats that the DREAM Act is still alive and that he has not given up on it. The International Business Times released an article today that explained why the bill is not completely dead.

Latinos and other immigrants won't forget how the Republicans and a couple of Democrats denied the DREAM Act at the Senate.

Every one knows that the immigrant and immigrant descent population will not decrease, and if anything it will only increase. Many people are trying to avoid this issue and hope that everyone will soon forget about it, but two years can pass very quickly and this topic will eventually spring up again.

Research Update

So lately I've been looking for research on the development of immigration laws since the 1920's. Most of the research consists of several article that have been published and archived in a couple of rare websites. What I find very interesting about the immigration laws, however, is that there seems to be a roller-coaster pattern in regard to the attitude towards immigrants, all the way until the 9/11 incident.

I plan on using this and much more research that I've found (including how certain political groups started using 9/11 to their advantage with scare tactics) whenever I start talking to people about the group. All I think I need to do now do just a little more research on demographics and talk to my panel members to see what I can do.