The Green Card Lottery, which ends at noon on November 3, 2012, could be an excellent way to get permanent residency for DREAMers who qualify for Deferred Action.
Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist and DREAMer himself, has pointed out recently that many undocumented immigrants within the United States are not necessarily Mexican or even Hispanic, rather, undocumented immigrants come from all over the world.
If you happen to get Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals before you turn 18 you will be protected by a clause in the policy that states that you will not accrue unlawful presence within the United States. This means that you can apply for other immigration benefits without your application being automatically thrown out due to unlawful residency. The Green Card Lottery would then be available for you and you could potentially receive a green card before your Deferred Action expires.
The discussion of the 12 million undocumented immigrants within the United States is a complicated thing and Vargas has been very vocal about the confusion. Many people, in an attempt to understand the matter, oversimplify the issue of unlawful status. Vargas has implied that for opponents of undocumented immigrants it comes down to a matter of race and people who are opposed to these immigrants are nothing more than masked racists. People who are against undocumented immigrants respond by saying that it is not a matter of race, but rather a matter of upholding the rule of law.
But laws are very human things, subject to error and misinterpretation and it is not unreasonable to cast some doubt over a set of sentences, composed many years ago, that might not make sense any longer. The very simple fact is that immigration reform is both needed and imminent and it is imperative for young people interested in their futures to become involved in it today.