Sen. Dick Durbin (John Gress/Reuters)
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee held the first hearing on the DREAM Act Tuesday, with an all-star
administration line-up.
Some big guns, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, are set to testify at the session chaired by by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and hosted by the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security.
The legislation, first introduced in 2001 and reintroduced several times since then, had earlier received the support of some Republicans but has fallen short of passage. Most recently, late last year, Senate Democrats attempted to fold the act into a defense-spending bill, only to see it filibustered. An effort to pass the DREAM Act separately also failed.
But Durbin is persistent.
"I've been working on the DREAM Act for over 10 years," he said in a statement. “"n that time, it's been reported out of committee by a large bipartisan margin, passed the House of Representatives, and received a bipartisan majority vote in the Senate, only to fall because of a filibuster."
..."This could be a piece of a solution to a number of the challenges our country faces," Duncan said Monday on a press conference call. "We just need the human potential, the tremendous capacity, to contribute to society, to contribute to our economy."
Duncan said the law would recue the federal deficit by $1.4 billion in the next decade by making it possible for more illegal immigrants to stay in the country and pay taxes.
The reality is, immigration reform—whether the DREAM Act or comprehensive immigration reform—would be a significant source of revenue for the nation. Whereas the status quo isn't working for anyone. Just ask the agriculture industry in Georgia. In a sane world, the DREAM Act would be a no-brainer, as would CIR. But anything that involves elected Republicans by definition isn't happening in a sane world.