ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a counterpart to Chapter 1 in that it outlines how despite a focus on “illegality” in immigration discourse a pathway to citizenship for certain undocumented migrants was introduced in April 2001: the DREAM Act. By analyzing the legal conditions of the Act itself and the political arguments that politicians and proponents created to petition for the Act’s passage, the chapter focusses both on the legal procedures that enabled a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants and on the discursive developments that accompanied the progress. As will be argued, it was indeed the years before 9/11 that presented a highly liberal atmosphere toward immigration in the United States and hence enabled the creation of a pathway to lawful residency status for undocumented students, which after 9/11 and the corresponding War on Terror became, once again, increasingly unlikely. Focusing on the discursive developments, it will be clarified how the highly influential trope of the DREAMer was not created by the undocumented themselves, but instead by politicians petitioning for the DREAM Act, constituting a novel benevolent trope for undocumented migrants that has arguably in turn initiated their own identification processes.
