The ETSU Foreign Language Department is crossing their fingers for a positive reaction to an act that will make dreams of a college education a reality for Tennessee immigrant students.
The DREAM Act – which stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors – is a proposed federal legislation that would allow undocumented students living in the United States the opportunity to go to college and be eligible for legal residency.
On April 12, ETSU along with other Tennessee Board of Regents schools sent petitions in support of the DREAM Act to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition in Nashville. “We are sending all of Tennessee’s petitions to The United We Dream Headquarters in Washington, D.C,” said David Lubell, director of the TIRRC. “A national coalition of groups supporting the DREAM Act will be presenting pro-DREAM petitions from all over the country to President Bush April 20.”
Their goal is to present 65,000 supporting signatures, he said.
ETSU Foreign Language Department quickly gathered signatures to send by the April 12 deadline. In the listing of names of students, faculty and staff are also those of administrators, including ETSU President Paul E. Stanton Jr., who helped show his support earlier this school year.
On Aug. 21, President Stanton wrote a letter to Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander expressing his support for the DREAM Act. ETSU “would benefit from the cultural and diverse contributions of a Hispanic student population, and our East Tennessee community would benefit from an increased number of educated professional young people,” Stanton said in the letter.
Stanton also highlighted the Foreign Language Department’s annual event, Hispanic Student Day. This event, made possible by the Kellogg sub-grant given to ETSU in 2000, is used as “a tool of encouragement for local Hispanic youth to continue their education” and as a way to give them an understanding of the university, Stanton wrote.
Through the course of planning Hispanic Student Day, immigration status issues became evident to Dr. Ardis Nelson and Holly Melendez, the event’s developers. “We began to find out that out motivation was cruel to the young people who desperately did want to go on to school, but knew that they couldn’t,” says Melendez, a faculty member and alumna of the foreign language department.
“I have been in touch personally with about four or five young people who are waiting and praying that the DREAM Act will pass so that they can go on to school,” Melendez says. “They are all bright, motivated and articulate people with no future in the country, but no past in their own.”
At present, hundreds of immigrant students graduate from Tennessee high schools aspiring to continue their education and to contribute to society, according to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition web site.
These students are faced with serious limitations, however, due to immigration laws. Without legal citizenship, students who have lived their formative years in the United States can only attend a state university by paying out-of-state tuition as a foreign student. Immigrant students are also not eligible for federal financial aid.
“It is not the fault of the child of the illegal immigrant,” Melendez says. “I am passionately against punishing them for the sins of their parents.”
For more information on the DREAM Act and ways to help, call Dr. Ardis Nelson at (423) 439-6897, Holly Melendez at (423) 439-4081, or go to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition website at www.tnimmigrant.org.

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