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New York DREAMers Take Their Push for State DREAM Act to Albany

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New York Dream ActOver the weekend, New York Daily News columnist Albor Ruiz wrote a powerful column about the work by DREAMers in New York to pass the New York DREAM Act. Among the DREAMers profiled by Ruiz was a good friend of our organization, César Vargas:

César Vargas is 26 and eager to carve out a future for himself and to contribute his considerable talents to the city and country he loves.

A New Yorker through and through who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Staten Island, Vargas is a recent CUNY School of Law graduate who achieved an impressive 3.8 grade-point average. He is serious, responsible and hardworking, exactly the kind of positive person America needs to embrace.

Yet thanks to a combination of political opportunism, prejudice and outright racism, what he has found is rejection. Like thousands of other decent, intelligent young people in New York, Vargas, who was born in Puebla, Mexico, and brought to Brooklyn when he was 5, is undocumented.

“I have received several job offers, including some from government agencies, but I cannot take them,” Vargas said without a trace of bitterness in his voice.

Last fall, César lobbied members of Congress to pass the DREAM Act. He wants to serve the U.S. in the military, a story we told on the website Let Us Serve. You can watch his powerful statement at a Capitol Hill press conference from last November here.

And now, just last week, César and other New York DREAMers were in Albany lobbying members of the New York State Legislature:

On Wednesday the New York Dreamers went to Albany to tell their representatives they need their support for a New York State DREAM Act.