United We DREAM tells President Obama to stop using the DREAM Act to campaign

WASHINGTON -- Immigration advocacy groups have a message for President Barack Obama: Stop using the DREAM Act to ask for campaign money unless you can deliver relief from deportation for undocumented youth.

United We DREAM, a group of young people pushing for the bill, started a petition last week asking the president to remove discussions of the bill in campaign literature and fundraising emails unless he is willing to use his executive power to block deportations for DREAM Act-eligible students.

The DREAM Act would grant legal status to some undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children and are now looking to attend college or join the military.

Although Obama has said repeatedly that he supports the DREAM Act and that undocumented students are not the focus of his immigration enforcement plans, some are nonetheless caught up in a deportation system that removed more than 390,000 people from the country last year.

On Wednesday, a group of DREAM Act supporters gathered outside an Obama fundraiser in Boston to protest against the president's deportation policies.

Vinicius Quirino, 25, a student who is in removal proceedings after overstaying a tourist visa, chanted, "Pass the DREAM Act now!" as attendees filtered into the fundraiser. Although Quirino would not be eligible for the DREAM Act as it is currently written -- he entered the United States from Brazil when he was 17, two years beyond the max entrance age under the bill -- he said he wants to make sure Obama supporters know the president has not delivered on his DREAM Act promises.

"We're just showing to people who were supporting him that he makes promises and he doesn't accomplish anything," he said. "So why are you supporting him? The students are still in the shit." (Huffington Post)

I am in full support of the President for reelection but I would like to see him follow through on more of the promises he made during his first campaign. His acitons are speaking much louder than his words these days and that could prove bad for business.