Dear Speaker Ryan, Leader Pelosi, Leader McConnell and Leader Schumer:
Now that there is a federal budget plan in place that addresses some of our Nation’s most pressing needs, we urge you to come together and complete another piece of urgent, unfinished business: to pass bipartisan legislation that permanently protects Dreamers from deportation and provides them with the ability to continue to work, study and serve in the military, so that they may fulfill their human potential and contribute to our campuses, communities and country.
The delay in addressing this matter has already come at a high human cost. But the ultimate cost, should Congress fail to act, will not just be borne by Dreamers and their families, but by the students who lose a teacher, the patients who lose a doctor, the lab that loses a researcher, the military unit that loses a trained and ready leader, the church that loses a volunteer. Our country and our economy will be poorer for it. We are a great and big enough country to embrace children raised as Americans and to place them on a pathway to citizenship.
We know Dreamers as our students, alumni, neighbors, friends and staff members. We have seen their potential and know their hunger to develop their talents and use them to serve this nation. In recent years, Americans of all backgrounds have come to learn their stories and understand their plight, and they too want you to act. Indeed, a majority of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, support a pathway to citizenship for these young people.
Thus, on behalf of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration , a non-partisan alliance of now over 250 college and university presidents and chancellors from across the nation, we urge you to pass bipartisan legislation to solve this problem as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Nancy Cantor, Co-Chair, Steering Committee
Chancellor
Rutgers University – Newark
Noelle E. Cockett
President
Utah State University
John J. DeGioia
President
Georgetown University
Dorothy J. Leland
Chancellor
University of California, Merced
David W. Oxtoby, Co-Chair, Steering Committee
President Emeritus
Pomona College
Eduardo J. Padrón
President
Miami Dade College
Timothy P. White
Chancellor
California State University
For more information on the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, please contact:
Louis Caldera ( lcaldera@presidentsimmigrationalliance.org )
Miriam Feldblum -( mfeldblum@presidentsimmigrationalliance.org ) or call 626-676-5849
Follow Us on Twitter @PresImmAlliance