Following the humiliating defeat of the Republican Party in last month’s US Presidential elections, many in the party believe that the only way they are going to be able to gain support from the growing Hispanic community in the country is to get behind immigration reform, but how to actually go about that seems to have them stumped.
The Achieve Act was introduced by Senators John Kyl and Kay Bailey Hutchinson last week; effectively a watered-down variation on Obama’s Dream Act, that would allow young illegal immigrants to have a path toward becoming citizens based on their educational status and age.
While some see it as a positive starting point for the Republican Party, others are not so enthusiastic, claiming that it simply does not do enough to persuade Hispanic voters that they have any understanding at all of their culture or their needs and are unlikely, therefore, to ever gain their trust or their votes.
Attorney and columnist Raul Reyes is one of those critics, saying that the Achieve Act “offers no clear path to and saddles undocumented youth with additional conditions for legal status.” Reyes says that the Achieve Act is weak besides the Dream Act. “The Dream Act would have allowed undocumented youth to get on a path to citizenship, provided they attended college or served in the military,” Reyes writes. “In contrast, the Achieve Act does not promise citizenship… Although they would be free from deportation, their futures would still be uncertain… is it really a good idea to create a long-term, growing class of ‘in-between’ people?”