Eclipse of Dreams

Refugees, asylum seekers, family separation, migrant detention. As the current US administration ratchets up a racist and dehumanizing immigration policy, it often seems that pretty much anything would be a better. The authors of this book have a somewhat longer memory than our mainstream media. They were, for the most part, DREAMers who fought for the passage of the DREAM Act under the Obama administration, and lost. That experience taught them hard lessons and allows them to see some of what is being missed in current immigration debates. The DREAM Act, like similar legislation proposed today, was simply a dressed up form of family separation. It sought to divide “good,” college-bound immigrants from family and community members designated less deserving of assimilation. This is a crucially important argument, one easily missed in the Democratic rush to score political points against Trumpism with policies that are often just more of the same disguised with liberal rhetoric. As the 2020 election approaches, immigration debates will be front and center. This book offers a unique perspective that questions the assumptions underpinning both Republican and Democratic “solutions.” Written by undocumented youth, it conveys the lived experiences of “illegality” and communicate how young people and their families navigate in diverse ways the contradictions of being undocumented. Questions the pervasive legislative narrative that offers rights nto certain immigrants (DREAMers, etc), as long as they are willing to sell parents, siblings, and friends up the proverbial river. Instead, the authors provide a critique of such "American Dreams" as incompatible with justice and human dignity. Marco Saavedra’s story of being intentionally arrested by Border Patrol in order to covertly enter an immigrant detention center in Broward county Florida, is the subject of the film The Infiltrators, directed by Christina Ibarra and Alex Rivera, which won this year’s Sundance NEXT section Audience Award, among others. The directors have offered our book’s authors the opportunity to share space with their ongoing premieres and openings across the country.