For a week now, young New York immigrants have been participating in a hunger strike outside Senator Chuck Schumer's office in midtown in hopes to win support for the DREAM act. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act was re-introduced to Congress in March of 2009. Providing the minor graduated from a US high school and had been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the bill would allow illegal minors to obtain temporary residency for six years, during which they must pursue a degree of higher education or serve in the uniformed services for at least two years to obtain conditional permanent residency. And apparently Schumer has been slow on his response.
According to the group's Facebook page, a "verbal commitment was made by the office of Senator Schumer" to provide a response about the possibility of a Congressional Hearing on the act by last Thursday. The Senator didn't come through, and now the protesters are starving themselves until Schumer moves the act to the Senate floor to vote.
The Library of Congress shows there are 39 cosponsors to the bill, including Sen. Shumer and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Sen. John McCain was a cosponsor when the bill was first introduced in 2007, but seems to have backed off the list.
Photograph by DM Shelton
