Obama's Dream Act By Executive Order Draws In New Wave Of Child Illegal Immigrants

Posted 12/26/2013 07:02 PM ET
investors.com

The Border Patrol and other agencies report a "surge" of unaccompanied minors coming across our border. It coincides with the White House's de facto amnesty via the Dream Act to reward such lawbreaking.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement noted a "surge" in unaccompanied alien children in its year-end report last week, pointing out that 24,668 foreign minors in the country illegally were placed in the care of a federal de facto baby-sitting service because no parents were around to care for them.

Last year's number was a near doubling from 2012, and nearly quadruple what it was at the start of the decade, according to a report on Fox News.

The surge just happens to coincide with the one opening in immigration that involves young people — the Dream Act. Though it never came to a vote in the Senate in 2010 after passing in the House in 2009, it's now being enforced by President Obama's executive order, enabling young illegals to jump the immigration queue to please the open borders lobby.

As a result, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports in fiscal 2011-12 that child migrants apprehended at the border have surged 208% from Honduras (from 974 to 2,997), 145% from Guatemala (1,565 to 3,835), 138% from El Salvador (1,394 to 3,314), and 19% from Mexico (11,768 to 13,974) over the year earlier.

Don't tell us this is just the ravages of the drug war — which has hit these four countries unevenly, the hardest hit being Honduras at the top of the list and Mexico at the bottom. The far more likely reason is the economies of these countries — with Honduras the worst and Mexico the best — which points to economic migrations, the draw of the Dream Act.

A search of the Google Honduras, Google Mexico, Google Guatemala and Google El Salvador websites shows significant spikes on search terms such as "Dream Act," "Acta Sueno" and particularly "Ley Dream" on days when Congress voted for the Dream Act (December 2010), on the days when President Obama issued an executive order to loosen the requirements and add waivers to the Dream Act, and when federal bureaucrats began taking Dream Act applications (August 2012).

In Honduras, where the jump in border apprehensions was the highest, the Internet traffic spikes from that country on those days were also the highest.

It all points to the inevitable consequence of extending amnesty to lawbreakers at the expense of the law-abiding — which is to say, more laws broken.

Of course parents are going to send their young people to the U.S. if it's easier to get residency illegally than legally. Of course they will send their unaccompanied minor children if they see their neighbors' children getting such rewards themselves.

And it's ridiculous to say that the law applies only to children who have been in the U.S. for five years as the Dream Act specifies.

If the waivers alone that are being issued don't ring the dinner triangle, the idea that amnesty is pretty much like standing on the subway platform waiting for the next subway — because the U.S. has issued something like 15 wholesale amnesties since 1986 — pretty well lays out the game for those who would be illegals.

And the game is this: Get here any way you can, wait, and you'll be rewarded.

Foreigners know very well that if it's going to be done at all, it better be done now, because no other U.S. president will likely be such a pushover as President Obama. And given the bipartisan failure on this issue, that's saying a lot.

What isn't reported is just how dangerous and damaging the idea of sending unaccompanied minor children to the U.S. is — it not only breaks up families and deprives children of their parents at a vulnerable time when they need them, it exposes them to human traffickers, labor exploitation and gangs.

It's happening, though, because of the magnetic pull of the Dream Act and the siren calls of the open borders lobby. They encourage illegal immigration and demand federal services for those here illegaly.

As we said, it's an illegal magnet. And it harms us all.