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The Student Immigration Movement gathered at the Massachusetts State House Tuesday afternoon to launch its Dare to Dream campaign, which calls for in-state tuition and state financial aid for the higher education of undocumented students.
Over 70 people convened on the grand staircase of the State House, chanting and calling for education reform to benefit undocumented students across the Commonwealth.
Carlos Rojas Álvarez, campaign coordinator at SIM, said the movement has been growing since its founding four years ago in the basement of a church in East Boston.
“Over the years, we’ve fought for education equity, we fought for the Dream Act and most recently, we helped to win Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals,” Álvarez said. “Today we’re here to launch our Dare to Dream Massachusetts campaign for 2015, which is going to be our legislative fight for our education equity bill.”
Up to 17,000 young people could apply for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, said Álvarez.
“That’s a snapshot of the number of people who then could potentially benefit from this legislation, so it’s significant,” Álvarez said. “We also hope to organize young people and create relationships with teachers and schools and labor and business to unify not just around this bill, which makes sense morally, ethically, economically, but also to create more power for the immigrant communities ahead of the 2016 elections.”
Massachusetts Rep. Denise Provost addressed the crowd in support of the SIM bill that she submitted to the state legislature.
“Educational equity is such an obvious direction for us to move in as a society,” Provost said. “Students are really motivated and want to do really well in school, until they reach a point where there are impediments to their future higher education that have nothing to do with them.”
Shannon Erwin, state policy director at the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, also spoke in support of the bill.
“This bill is truly about the American dream. You cannot have an American dream without an education,” Erwin said. “Education is not just a handout. It’s not just something that benefits the person that goes to school. It’s a gift that keeps on giving for all of society. It helps all of us.”
Valeria Dovale, 17, of West Roxbury, an undocumented junior at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Sciences in Roxbury, said attended the campaign launch to show her support for SIM.
“I just recently received DACA, and that was through meeting SIM and having them direct me, telling me I could apply,” Dovale said. “As an undocumented student, I only receive in-state tuition. I don’t receive financial aid, and I’m here only with my mother. I have no way of going to college unless I get financial aid, and there are very few scholarships that I can possibly apply for and receive that would give me enough money to attend a four-year college.”
Dovale was joined by several other undocumented students, including Denis Rodriguez, 17, of New Bedford, also a junior in high school.
“It’s the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a person who is known greatly for his activism, and standing for the civil rights movement and the colored community,” he said. “Here today, we gather as an undocumented community, an allied community, so we can stand for our rights for education.”
Boston teacher Caitlin Macleod-Bluver, 26, said she attended the rally to support her students.
“I’m here for my students because I’m tired of seeing them not go to college because it’s unaffordable,” she said. “I hope, first of all, for more awareness around the issue. I’ve brought a lot of my students, so I hope for more engagement with the issue, and real action that my students can count on.”
Jenny Cintron, 53, of Dorchester, said she supports the undocumented youth in Massachusetts.
“We want to send a loud and clear message to the legislation here today that we want to support the youth,” she said. “I really hope they listen and that they actually change policy. This is to be the first initiative to get the kids what they need. Just because they’re immigrants, they have human rights and they deserve an education.”
