Literature Review Blog#1

Source Citation:

Motomura, Hiroshi, Making Legal: The Dream Act, Birthright Citizenship, and Broad-Scale Legalization (January 15, 2013). 16 Lewis & Clark Law Review 1127-48 (2012); UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 13-01. 

Summary:

In his article "Making Legal: The DREAM Act, Birthright Citizenship and Broad-Scale Legalization", Hiroshi Motomura explores both arguments, for and against the DREAM Act. He uncovers the morality and fairness behind the law's supporters and those who feel strongly against it. He also uncovers supreme court cases that directly influence the application of the DREAM Act. This article leans toward supporting the DREAM Act and gives counter-arguments for the opponents of the law. 

Author Information:

http://www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/all-faculty-profiles/professors/Pages/hiroshi-motomura.aspx

According to UCLA, where he has been a professor since 2007, "Hiroshi Motomura is an influential scholar and teacher of immigration and citizenship law. He is a co-author of two immigration-related casebooks: Immigration and Citizenship: Process and Policy (7th ed. West, 2012), and Forced Migration: Law and Policy (2d ed. West, 2013).  His book, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (Oxford, 2006) won the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award from the Association of American Publishers as the year’s best book in Law and Legal Studies, and was chosen by the U.S. Department of State for its Suggested Reading List for Foreign Service Officers.  A companion volume, Immigration Outside the Law, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2014. In addition, he has published many significant articles and essays on immigration and citizenship." 

Key Terms:

DREAM Act- Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, which gives legal status to alien minors who came to the US as children, only if they attend college or serve in the military. (1128)

Plyler vs. Doe- (1128)- Supreme court decision of 1982 that decided that a state cannot limit a child's access to public elementary and second education based on his/her immigration status. It also emphasized that education prevents alien children from being disadvantaged permanently as they grew older and their education must be supported in our equality-centered culture.

Quotes:

1."The pragmatic objections to the DREAM Act draw on the same two Plyler themes. Focusing on unlawful presence, individuals who are illegally in the United States pose a straightforward problem that the government can solve by apprehending and deporting them, or by making life for them hard enough that they will leave. Such enforcement policies in the United States are needed, this argument continues, to support border enforcement and the system for lawful admission to the United States" (1133). 

 2. "This broadening is part of the integration of immigrants into American society. Children in immigrant families are typically much more likely than their parents to become integrated linguistically, socially, and in other dimensions. This is true regardless of a child’s legal status, but is even more true for children who have lawful immigration status or citizenship, which allows them to serve more effectively as cultural brokers between their parents and mainstream society outside immigrant enclaves" (1136).

 3. "To focus discussion, I start with a brief sketch of Plyler v. Doe, a landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Plyler held that no state can limit a child’s access to public elementary and secondary education based on his or her immigration status.3 The Court struck down a Texas state statute that allowed local school districts to prevent children from attending public schools if they were not lawfully in the United States" (1128).

4. "The DREAM Act would establish several conditions for lawful status. According to the proposal as introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2011, the noncitizen individual must have been under sixteen when she arrived in the United States.11 She must have resided in the United States continuously for the five years preceding enactment of the law.12 She must have earned a high school diploma or the equivalent in the United States, or have been admitted to a U.S. college or university.13 A noncitizen meeting these requirements would be eligible to be a conditional permanent resident.14 If she is under thirty-five at the time the act passed, and attends college or serves in the U.S. military for two years, she would become a lawful permanent resident" (1130). 

Value:

This material gives me a more in depth look at how the DREAM Act functions and it gives me a lot of information on arguments for and against the Act. It gives me a look into immigration in general and how the DREAM Act relates to it overall. Furthermore, the article gives me information from a supreme court point of view and how legally it should be passed to support a supreme court decision, Plyler vs. Doe.