With immigration policy taking center stage in the current presidential campaign, filmmakers Jenniffer Castillo and Saray Deiseil's American DREAMers is a timely documentary about the plight of the undocumented in America. It follows a 3,000-mile walk that a group of seven people—Veronica Gomez, Jonatan Martinez, Raymi Gutierrez, Javier Hernandez, Jose Sandoval, Nico Gonzalez, and Alex Aldana—made from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in 2012 to advocate for the passage of the so-called Dream Act, which would have allowed those brought to the country as children to remain and become eligible for legal status. Since most of the marchers fell into that category, their participation could actually have put them at risk of deportation. The film is a homespun affair that mixes footage from their difficult trek—including a sit-in at the Denver office of the Obama re-election campaign, encouraging the president to take executive action in the absence of legislative change—and excerpts from later interviews with the marchers. The documentary also recounts Obama's 2012 decision to order an amendment of then-current practice by establishing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which provides a two-year postponement of deportation proceedings for young people who qualify—although not their parents. Even though this 2015 film does not include coverage of recent court actions that have stymied Obama's effort to expand DACA, it personalizes an issue that is too often treated in an abstract manner, and thereby helps humanize the strident political debate over immigration. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)
American DREAMers
(2015) 88 min. DVD or Blu-ray: $200: public libraries & high schools; $350: colleges & universities. DRA. Tugg. PPR. Volume 31, Issue 5
American DREAMers
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