Secretaries of Education and Labor Met With Illegal Aliens at Ed. Dept. HQ

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Education Secretary Arne Duncan meeting at the Department of Education with a group that, according to the Department of Labor’s newsletter, included a “majority” of people who were “DREAMers.” (Official Department of Education photo by Leslie Williams)

(CNSNews.com) – A group of illegal aliens visited the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 15 where they held a “Student Voices” meeting with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, according to information about the meeting posted on the official Department of Education and Department of Labor websites.

Department of Education Spokesman Jim Bradshaw, while acknowledging receiving questions about the meeting from CNSNews.com, failed to respond to those questions after they were put to him via both phone and email messages on Thursday and Friday of this week.

At the meeting, according to the Department of Labor’s website, Duncan told the illegal aliens about the administration’s “efforts to assist students who are undocumented” through the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act—the DREAM Act. Solis also spoke to the illegal aliens about the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act, sponsored by Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin (Ill.), would legalize illegal aliens who had entered the U.S. before their 16th birthday, who had been in the U.S. for at least five years preceding the passage of the act, and who had been admitted to a college or earned a high school diploma or a general education development certificate.

The Department of Education reported on the meeting between the illegal aliens and the two Cabinet secretaries in an article published on the department’s official blog.

The blog article, written by a New Mexico high school teacher designated as a “guest blogger,” was headlined: “Secretaries Duncan and Solis Meet with DREAMers.” The article explained that “DREAMer” is “a label derived from the ‘DREAM Act’ that the students use to describe undocumented young people.”

An online newsletter published by the Department of Labor said that “the majority” of the students who attended the meeting with Duncan and Solis were “DREAMers” who “spoke candidly about their uncertain futures and the possibility of deportation.”

[To see video of the Department of Education blog article and the Department of Labor’s newsletter article and slideshow on Duncan’s and Solis’s meeting with the “DREAMers” click below:]