SIMmers on the cover of TIME Magazine!

Submitted by Conrado S. on June 14, 2012 - 12:00am

Seven Massachusetts DREAMers Featured on Cover of TIME Magazine

Cover Story by Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist and Fellow DREAMer, Jose Antonio Vargas, Describes What it’s Like to “Come Out” as an Undocumented American

 

The cover of this week’s TIME Magazine features seven young Massachusetts immigrants among others in the immigrant-led movement for fair immigration reform and policies.  The issue, which is available online today and on newsstands Tuesday, features a personal essay from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, who started the group Define American after coming out as undocumented in the New York Times last year. 

 

In addition to Vargas’ essay, the TIME web site and iPad app features videos of DREAMers including seven from Massachusetts:

  • ·         Renata Teodoro from Brazil, who has raised over half a million dollars for a Boston nonprofit. “I want to keep fighting until I can see my mother again,” she says.
  • ·         Tatevik Keshishyan from Armenia, a recent Boston University graduate who wants to work toward curing cancer.
  • ·         Conrado Santos from Brazil, a community organizer who wants to be a university professor.
  • ·         Daniela Bravo from Chile, who wants to be an evolutionary anthropologist.
  • ·         Isabel Vargas from the Dominican Republic, who says she will “keep fighting until I become an immigration attorney.”
  • ·         Yonerky Santana from the Dominican Republic, who says, “I refuse to give up until I reach my dreams of becoming a naturopathic doctor.”
  • ·         Luis Gomez of Guatemala, who wants to become an architect.

 

These young people, like Vargas, are “DREAMers”—immigrants without papers who came to the U.S. as children, grew up here, and consider themselves American in every way but their citizenship.    By declaring their immigration status publicly, and telling the world what it feels like to be both undocumented AND American, DREAMers are helping to change the national conversation about immigration reform. 

And they are not alone.  Vargas, the Massachusetts DREAMers on the cover of TIME, and many others like them survive and thrive with the support of their own personal “underground railroads”—networks of teachers, neighbors, pastoral advisors, and friends—who have stood by them and advocated on their behalf.  Together, immigrants and native-born Americans are challenging Congress to pass the DREAM Act and comprehensive reform, and challenging the Obama Administration to let these young people to work legally in the only country they know as home.  Define American was founded on this very idea that immigrants and native-born citizens who share the same values should support each other, with the goal of sparking an honest conversation in American about fixing our broken immigration laws and finally achieving real reforms.    

 

[This is our Press Release from the TIME magazine cover piece. Sorry for not having an awesome blog post about it — but you can probably imagine we’ve been going nuts! We will update soon.]