The Dinosaurs of Immigration Reform

I loved this post at La Frontera Times with the dinosaur metaphor for people who hold the lives of immigrant youth hostage, so go ahead and read the whole thing. Here is the excerpt that drew me in:

Demand the Dream Act! Now that is a reason to march. The Dream Act can pass this session. The votes can realistically be gathered for it. The political realists in this Administration know that there will be electoral hell to be paid this November. They can easily be convinced the Dream Act is a relatively inexpensive but metaphorically powerful down payment on a broken promise. The problem of course may not be them but us. The dinosaurs that have directed the immigration reform lobbying movement for the past decade are committed to the one true bill dogma. The dogma of the one comprehensive immigration reform bill that encompasses all. The one bill strategy has meant that opportunities to pursue the Dream Act as a stand-alone piece of legislation have not been taken. The strategy has relegated a generation of kids to life as fugitives on the margins of society. The dinosaurs will resist, ultimately threatening to take their inestimable and necessary resources home if the plebeians insist on questioning their strategic wisdom and challenging their devotion to the dogma of one comprehensive bill.

So dinosaurs rarely know that they are dinosaurs… if you care about the Dream Act you should tell them forcefully.

Political dinosaurs usually do not go extinct. They camouflage and take on new shapes and roles, but with the same old philosophy. Extinction is out of question.