DREAM Team members, College Democrats lobby for immigration reform on Capitol Hill

Thirty students traveled to Capitol Hill on May 7 to speak with Congressional representatives and lobby for comprehensive immigration reform, in a trip organized by the DREAM Team.

The trip took place as the Senate Judiciary Committee began its review of a sweeping bi-partisan immigration bill completed on April 16 that would overhaul current immigration law. The process will also review amendments to the bill submitted by Congressional representatives. The group of students mostly consisted of members of the University’s DREAM Team and College Democrats, but was open to all students.

Princeton’s DREAM team, a student group that is sponsored by the Pace Center, advocates for the passing of the proposed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act that would grant permanent residency to certain undocumented individuals, organized the one-day trip to Washington, D.C. in order to join the national conversation on immigration law, according to Logan Coleman ’15, co-director of the DREAM Team.

“As Princeton students, we thought this might be one of the last things we could do as a group to try to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform,” Alexandra Junn ’15, treasurer of DREAM Team, added.

In D.C., trip attendees split into seven groups and met with Congressional representatives of their states of residence. In the case that their own local representative was unavailable, the students met with members of their staff or immigration specialists.

In order to prepare for the meetings, trip attendees met beforehand to review arguments for and against comprehensive immigration reform. According to Coleman, they had also formulated a platform which included three components: immediate provisional status for all undocumented individuals regardless of age, an eventual pathway to citizenship for those individuals and an expedited process for DREAM Act-eligible individuals.

Stops on the students’ itinerary included visits to the offices of Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Arizona Senator John McCain, two prominent members of the “Gang of Eight” which spearheaded the immigration bill.

The group also spoke with New Jersey representative Rush Holt, who served as assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1989 to 1998.

“[Holt] was a great guy to talk to. He really cares about Princeton students,” Emily Vanderlinden ’13, former chair of campaigns for the College Democrats, said.

Students said the trip allowed them to reevaluate their perspectives on the act.

“I expected to go and disagree with Republicans on a lot of things and agree with Democrats on a lot things, but I found that I was agreeing with Republicans on some things and disagreeing with Democrats on other things,” Coleman said. She also noted her concern that Democratic representatives and even the Vice Chair of the Hispanic Caucus are going to vote down the entire bill if it does not contain certain provisions they are pushing for by the end of the review.

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John Parvin ’16, co-chair of the DREAM Team advocacy committee and a resident of Texas, met with Texas Republican Representatives, but said the meeting was a frustrating one.

“They seemed to simply talk in circles. They would say even though it was an incredibly important issue, the federal government couldn’t do anything, the state government couldn’t do anything, even the local government couldn’t do anything to enforce their own polices, and so, for me, I was encountering a lot of frustration,” Parvin said.

However, Parvin said his meeting with Texas Representative Joe Barton was more encouraging. Barton, who is a Republican, represents a district of 50 percent Hispanic or Latino residents and supports a pathway to citizenship for DREAM Act-eligible individuals and permanent residency for undocumented persons, Parvin said.

“I thought for a Republican to come out and say that was amazing. He also said that in reality, probably nothing would actually happen because of the landscape happening in Congress, but still he said that he supported it,” Parvin said. “That kind of interest in his own constituents … it gave me a little bit of hope that my Texan Republicans were in the end going to do the right thing for their constituents.”

Since the University does not fund campaigns or lobbying activities and the Pace Center no longer has extra funding, the DREAM Team raised $1,500 on its own for the trip. Yessica Martinez ’15, co-director of DREAM Team, reached out to the alumni group Princeton Progressives, which created a fundraising campaign for the trip through its website.

However, the Friday before the week of the trip, the DREAM Team had only received around half of its financial goal. Martinez then reached out to Harold Fernandez ’89, whom she had read about in a New York Times profile about his struggles as an undocumented college student and Princeton’s eventual acceptance of his status. Fernandez, a cardiac surgeon, has written a memoir about his experiences as an illegal immigrant titled Undocumented.

As Martinez was preparing to have DREAM Team members turn to family members for the rest of the donations, Fernandez responded that he would fund the other half of the campaign. In total, by the end of the campaign, the DREAM Team raised $1,600 and was able to pay for both the charter bus and the attendees’ meals.