Education

An Undocumented Student at Georgetown, and One at Harvard, Too

By Mary Ann Zehr — February 23, 2009 1 min read
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One issue concerning immigration and education that has received a great deal of media coverage is whether students who are brought to the United States illegally by their parents and graduate from U.S. high schools should have a path to legalization, if they attend college or serve in the military.

The Washington Post Magazine ran a profile over the weekend of one of these students, Columbian native Juan Gomez, a 20-year-old finance student at Georgetown University. New America Media recently reported that Harvard University has an engineering student, Juan Hernandez-Campos, who is also undocumented.

When he was running for president, Barack Obama spoke out in favor of the Development, Relief, and Education for Minors Act, or DREAM Act, which would provide a way for these students to become legal. The act stalled in Congress in November 2007. We haven’t heard any word from President Obama about whether he will try to get Congress to pass the law.

But Feet in 2 Worlds reports that Obama said in an interview with a Spanish-language radio station recently that he will soon call on people involved in immigration issues to draft a comprehensive immigration bill to send to Congress. There’s a good chance, I speculate, that the DREAM Act could be included in that draft.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.