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TIME Magazine Profiles DREAMers: We Are American

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Check out this very powerful front-cover by Jose Antonio Vargas of Define American on the DREAM Act and DREAMers. We’re tweeting about the article using the hashtag #WeAreAmericans.


Define America’s Jose Antonio Vargas wrote a long essay about his journey as an undocumented immigrant–the full article is still behind the TIME paywall, but an excerpt was provided:

There are an estimated 11.5 million people like me in this country, human beings with stories as varied as America itself, yet lacking a legal claim to exist here. It’s an issue that touches people of all ethnicities and backgrounds: Latinos and Asians, blacks and whites. (And, yes, undocumented immigrants come from all sorts of countries like Israel, Nigeria and Germany.) It’s an issue that goes beyond election-year politics and transcends the limitations of our broken immigration system and the policies being written to address them.

In the year since my public disclosure, at least 2,000 undocumented Americans — and we are, at heart, Americans — have personally contacted me and outed themselves, either in person or online through email, Facebook or Twitter. Across the country, every day, more and more undocumented Americans and the people who support us are speaking out, challenging how our politicians, the media and the Supreme Court (in its expected decision on Arizona’s immigration law) frame the issue. This week in TIME magazine and on TIME.com we spotlight the growing immigration rights movement and the ins and outs of the citizenship process.

Here’s TIME’s video of the DREAMers:

Well worth the read if you can get your hands on the article. We’ll hope to have more on this soon.