12 Student Activists fly accross the Nation for a DREAM

During the past month, Dream Activists have been organizing for a mass mobilization of students from all over the country for three days of action in support of the DREAM Act, which begin today in Washington, D.C.

The other Washington, the state, is sending 12 students from the Washington Dream Act Coalition, which I am a member of, across the country to join their comrades. It has been a big challenge for these students to fund this expensive trip but through the pursue of making their Dreams a reality, they managed to collect the funds they needed to fly to DC. Many hours of reaching out to other organizations for donations and creative fundraisers prove the amount of talent and discipline these students have, some of only 18 years of age like Carlos Padilla, and Carlos Ganz, who coordinated the challenging project.

Alonso Chehade on Becoming a Promoter of Positive Change

My name is Alonso, and I am alumni of the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. I am also an undocumented student who has been fighting deportation during the past year. I am still in the country thanks to the support of many, including SEIU, who not only supported me during my struggle with immigration, but has also given me the opportunity to be part of the last phase of the Trail of Dreams, an inspiring story of four students who have walked 15,000 miles from Florida to D.C. to give the undocumented youth a voice.

A year ago, on March 15, 2009, I was stopped by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities, charged, arrested, and sent to jail for two weeks. What’s crazy about this is that I was brought by my parents at the age of 14 through a tourist visa, which then the family overstayed, so it wasn’t really my choice to come here and be undocumented. On top of that, the reason my parents had to immigrate through a tourist visa was because doing it through our U.S. Citizen relatives would have taken more than 10 years, which is literally a big slap in the face. We are talking about the hierarchy of needs here and the reason my family decided to move to another country was because of the lack of the physiological part of it in our home country Peru.

Before my incident with immigration I wasn’t too knowledgeable about the immigration system until it hit me hard. I still remember passionately reading a huge book called “Know your rights” while I was in jail, and that was a turning point in my life. The more I learned, the more I knew that I had to get out there and tell the world.

Happy to be part of something big in Washington!

Today many undocumented young leaders here in the State of Washington met through a conference call to join forces and launched the Washington Dream Act Coalition. It was very empowering to see many eager to take all our grassroot efforts to the next level.

I am ready to see how our collective work is going to take place around here. I think we are about to see more students getting involved in the political process and advocating for their futures.

On Saturday I was part of a discussion panel for the screening of "Papers" the movie at the University of Washington in Tacoma. There I met new undocumented students who want to wait no more to start taking some action. An interesting part of the event was when one of the attendees stated that she didn't support the Dream Act because of the military provision in it, which is that a Dream Act candidate would need to complete two years in college or in the military. What trigger her opposition was that she is 100% against war and she though that by supporting the Dream Act, she would be encouraging individuals to join the military forces and thus indirectly supporting the war.

Anyhow, once I explained to her that the Dream Act was really focus on allowing students to continue their education and not encouraging them to join the military, she joined the list of supporters.


This is all for now, Thank you for serving with me.


Dream Agent Alonso Chehade