Undocumented Students Quotes

'Dream Act' kids are like all other American kids, with the exception that they have to work harder to excel in school, they live in fear of deportation, and they worry about their future.

Every year, some 65,000 high school students - many of them star students and leaders in their communities - are unable to go to college or get a good job because they have no legal status.

I'm still the community college kid with immigrant parents.

Education is the gateway to the American Dream. But today our immigration laws make higher education - a virtual requirement for financial security - out of reach for more than one million undocumented students.

I came across this circumstance of undocumented students. These are kids who were brought to this country as youngsters, who are raised as Americans and go to American schools, and then when they graduate high school, they have no prospects in front of them because they are undocumented and illegally in the United States.

I strongly believe the DREAM Act should require the completion of a degree.

The threshold of the Dream Act is not high enough. One year of community college is not enough... No, I do not support the Dream Act.

I think it's awful that the state of Oklahoma a couple of years ago passed this law to give the same tuition to illegals as they do to people who are residents of Oklahoma. I think it's wrong.

We have to stand up for these issues when it's tough, and that's what I've done. I did it when I was in the state legislature, sponsoring the Illinois version of the DREAM Act, so that children who were brought here through no fault of their own are able to go to college, because we actually want well-educated kids in our country who are able to succeed and become part of this economy and part of the American dream.

Instead, California is one of only 10 states that provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants. That's grossly unfair to a legal high school student who moves out of California for a year, then returns to attend college.

We've now got a group of young people in this country who for all practical purposes are American. They grew up here. They've gone to school here. They don't know anything other than being American kids. But their parents may have brought them here without all the proper paperwork - might have brought them here when they were three, might have brought them here when they were five. And so, lo and behold, by the time they finish school, and they're ready to go to college, they find out they can't go to college and, in fact, their status as Americans are threatened.