Excerpt: Dreamer Nation: Immigration, Activism, and Neoliberalism —Ana Milena Ribero

Introduction

After more than ten years of activism, the undocumented young people popularly known as Dreamers won a much-deserved victory the day President Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Since 2001 young people who lived in the United States without proper documentation had been advocating for the passage of some sort of legislation that would give them respite from deportation, a method of regularization, and perhaps even a path to US citizenship. Time and time again, these Dreamers had seen their efforts go to waste. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) act, the piece of legislation that would help undocumented youth, continued failing to get traction on Capitol Hill, with a devastating defeat in December of 2010, when the bill passed in the House of Representatives but was narrowly defeated by filibuster in the Republican-controlled Senate. Then, on June 15, 2012, Obama did what Congress had been unable to do for ten years. DACA would provide Dreamers with temporary relief so they could establish their lives legally while Congress continued to debate a more permanent solution (1).


In the years leading up to the DACA announcement, weary of living lives of abjectivity, (2) undocumented youth worked to place themselves in the forefront of the immigrant rights movement, using creative and passionate activism to respond to the US government’s inaction and to counter the ongoing xenophobic nationalism that gained momentum after the terrorist attacks of September 11. In early 2010, in preparation for the DREAM Act’s efforts in Congress, Dreamers ramped up their public presence with activism that illustrated their willingness to put their bodies on the line in order to be recognized as members of the nation. On March 10, 2010, the first “Coming Out of the Shadows” event was held in Chicago’s Federal Plaza, with groups of young people publicly declaring their undocumented status in front of the offices of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a risky move that was unprecedented. Similar rallies continue to be held around the country in an effort not only to increase public visibility of the undocumented community but also to empower undocumented youth to live their lives without fear. The Coming Out of the Shadows rallies were followed by another defiant moment of activism: on May 17, 2010, five young people dressed in graduation caps and gowns held a sit-in in the Tucson, Arizona, offices of Sen. John McCain, demanding he sponsor the DREAM Act. Four of the protesters were arrested: three of them were undocumented. The New York Times reported this as the “first time students have directly risked deportation in an effort to prompt Congress to take up a bill that would benefit illegal immigrant youths”(3). It would not be the last time.


Embodying the slogan “Undocumented and Unafraid,” Dreamers drew strength and knowledge from the activist traditions of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (4) (BIPOC) communities in the US—primarily the civil disobedience tactics of the Civil Rights Movement and the street performance strategies of Chicanx student activism (5)—to demand recognition as members of the nation. Dreamer activism not only made waves on the streets. Pictures of Dreamers wearing graduation caps and gowns circulated through popular media to interject Dreamers’ faces—as well as their message—into the lives of the US mainstream. In a matter of years, the loosely construed group of people known as Dreamers went from being relatively unknown outside of their immediate communities to being famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) household names. These fierce young people worked largely as a grassroots effort organizing street actions, creating and circulating media content, and sometimes butting heads with mainstream immigrant rights activist organizations that had previously dominated the scene.


As a Latinx (6) immigrant, I watched in awe as undocumented young people—fearless and rhetorically savvy—put everything on the line in order to fight for justice. As a scholar of rhetoric, I was fascinated by how Latinx Dreamers used bilingual, bicultural, and multimodal resources to craft a cogent message to a sometimes hostile audience. Dreamers demonstrated how grassroots efforts continue to effect social change, even in an era of professionalized and corporatized activism. This book reflects my desire to examine how Dreamers, through careful rhetorical moves, challenged the ways the country thought about undocumented immigrants while pushing themselves and their movement to avoid reproducing the dominant US tendency of essentializing populations of color. I wanted to understand the rhetorical choices that went into creating a movement with various, often conflicting, goals. I wanted to dive into the Dreamers’ rhetorics, to think about what prompted their message, and to ponder its implications.

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Notes

1. While DACA provided respite from the threat of deportation, many Dreamer activists were skeptical of its implementation. DACA required its recipients to either attend college or serve in the military, the former a difficult option in a time of rising costs in higher education, and the latter a dangerous one in a time of continued US mil­itary involvement around the world. Many Dreamers also believed that those require­ments fractured the Dreamer community by benefiting only a relatively small group of Dreamers while leaving other undocumented folks in the same situation, including their parents and loved ones who were not eligible for DACA. Some even felt anxious about providing the government their information in order to enroll in DACA. What would happen to that information if Congress failed to find a more permanent solution to their status? Would the government then in essence have a Dreamer deportation list?

2. Roberto G. Gonzales and Leo R. Chavez, “‘Awakening to a Nightmare’: Abjectiv­ity and Illegality in the Lives of Undocumented 1.5-Generation Latino Immigrants in the United States,” Current Anthropology 53, no. 3 (2012): 255–81.

3.  Julia Preston, “Illegal Immigrant Students Protest at McCain Office,” New York Times, May 17, 2010.

4. BIPOC underscores the differential experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples with oppression, racism, and colonization.

5. Eileen Truax, Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation’s Fight for Their American Dream (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015).

6. Christine Garcia writes that the term “Latinx” reflects a rejection of gendered language practices and of the colonial gender binary. My use of “Latinx” here and else­where in this book is meant as a challenge to the patriarchy of language and as a gesture of inclusion to all people, regardless of gender identity. Christine Garcia, “In Defense of Latinx,” Composition Studies 45, no. 2 (2017): 210–11.


A book cover featuring the title "Dreamer Nation: Immigration, Activism, and Neoliberalism by Ana Milena Ribero" in vibrant red and orange text. The backdrop is a soothing light yellow. The central image depicts the outline of the United States filled with a mosaic of opaque photos showcasing diverse faces from various races and backgrounds.

Dreamer Nation: Immigration, Activism, and Neoliberalism illustrates how the Dreamer community was created rhetorically—in the discourse, messages, actions, and visual representations of undocumented youth. Available for order now.

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