This one’s a few days old, but it’s worth mentioning, particularly in light of recent developments in Arizona.

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) have written to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano asking her to put deportations of students who would be eligible for legal residency under the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act, now working its way through Congress, would provide a path to citizenship for certain college students who were brought to the United States as children without proper documentation.

As previously noted on this blog, current immigration law puts students who have been American residents since early childhood at risk of deportation. There is no consistent policy for dealing with such students’ cases, and though several have recently won reprieves, they have done so at significant expense and emotional turmoil. Moreover, as senators Durbin and Lugar point out, such deportation proceedings represent “an inefficient use of [the] limited resources” of the DHS.