1. Our nation has entered a new era of hope. The newly formed and growing mass youth political movement that was the engine of the Obama campaign won a historic victory on November 4th and seeks an America free of racial prejudice, discrimination, and every vestige of the New Jim Crow. Now for the first time, millions of young Latina/o, black, other minority, immigrant, and poor white students who have been denied equal educational opportunities and access to higher education feel like the lives they have been working so hard to attain might actually be possible to realize. The task of the new civil rights movement and every young person, who for the first time are taking the risk of dreaming about what their lives, communities, state and nation could become, is to use our collective power to make those dreams real. We must make sure that President-elect Obama stays accountable to the mass movement that put him into office.

2. Hundreds of thousands of gifted undocumented students are denied the opportunity to attend college. Undocumented students are discriminatorily denied access to federal college financial aid, and even if they overcome this and graduate their future remains uncertain. Passage of the Federal Dream Act would give undocumented students the opportunity to receive federal financial aid and open a pathway to citizenship.

3. The families and communities of undocumented students contribute billions of tax dollars and incalculable hours of poorly paid labor that benefit the economy. Giving their sons and daughters the right to benefit from publicly-funded tuition aid programs is fair and just.

4. If enacted, the Federal Dream Act will establish the important principle that undocumented students can no longer be assigned to a second-class, inferior status and must be treated with respect and dignity. The longstanding legal right of undocumented students to receive the same public educational opportunities as everyone else would be closer to becoming real.

5. President-elect Obama and a large bipartisan majority of Congress have repeatedly declared their support for the passage of the Federal Dream Act. On November 5, 2008, University of California-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgineau called on President-elect Obama to enact the Federal Dream Act as soon as he assumes office. Immediate enactment of the Federal Dream Act would clear the way for California and other states to enact state level Dream Acts this year.

6. Winning the enactment of the Federal Dream Act will advance the fight for increased financial aid for all poor, working class, and middle class students who need massively expanded federal aid programs to attain a university education.

Therefore, we the undersigned:

1. Call on President-elect Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress to enact a Federal Dream Act in Obama’s first 100 days of office.

2. Call on every university system, educational institution and association, state and local governmental entity to ask Obama to enact a Federal Dream Act.

3. Stand on the principle that Latina/o, black, Asian, Arab, Native American, and white, immigrants with and without papers—We are America.