Thread: The DREAM Act Is an Amnesty Bill That America Cannot Afford

The DREAM Act Is an Amnesty Bill That America Cannot Afford
By Rep. Steve King
Published December 06, 2010
FoxNews.com

President Obama and the liberal open-border leadership of the Democratic Party are pushing for passage of legislation granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. They are doing this despite the fact that this costly legislation will make a difficult job market worse, will place a higher tax burden on Americans, will ensure greater difficulty in balancing budgets on the state and federal level, and will undermine respect for our nation’s immigration laws. -- Congress should wake up from this nightmare by defeating the DREAM Act.

In November, voters’ concerns about the weak economy and the poor job market contributed to the election of a large Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Voters understand, even if the Democratic leadership doesn’t, that granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens will make it even more difficult for unemployed Americans to find work. With the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent the last thing American job hunters need is millions of DREAM Act amnesty recipients competing with them for work.

The DREAM Act not only undermines economic opportunities for Americans, it also makes it less likely that either state governments or the federal government will bring their budgets into balance.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released a report indicating that this amnesty bill will cost state and local taxpayers over $6.2 billion annually, not per decade as Congressional budgets are calculated, because state universities and local community colleges will be forced, by law, to grant illegal aliens in-state tuition discounts. The DREAM Act does not provide federal funding to cover these costs, meaning Americans will be required to pay higher taxes and higher tuition rates.

Providing facts about tuition fees provides insight into the magnitude of this unjust benefit being given to illegal aliens under the DREAM Act. At the University of Iowa, an in-state resident attending the College of Business pays $3,894 per semester while an out-of-state resident pays $12,068 per semester. At Iowa State University, an in-state resident pays $3,566 per semester to attend the College of Business, while an out-of-state resident pays $9,347. Other public universities show similar multipliers. In fact, in the University of California system, in-state residents pay no tuition at all, while out-of-state residents pay a non-resident tuition fee that costs $22,021 per year at all University of California campuses.

This tuition treatment creates a moral conundrum for DREAM Act supporters. What does one say to the widow or widower who has lost their husband or their wife in Iraq, or the child who lost their mother or father in Afghanistan, who is paying out-of-state tuition premiums while they are sitting at a desk next to someone who has received amnesty and a de facto scholarship under the DREAM Act?

Further, the deficit spending federal government will face huge spending increases under the DREAM Act. When amnesty proponents point to a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis to claim that the DREAM Act has a short-term positive effect on budget deficits, they do so in an attempt to distract American taxpayers from the long-term negative effects on the budget that are much more pronounced and severe. CBO found that deficit spending on welfare programs would increase by at least $5 billion, and possibly much more, after 2020 as a result of granting DREAM Act amnesty.

As bad as the costs revealed by the CIS and CBO analysis are, it is likely that they are vastly understated because each analysis was based on the assumption that 1.1 million illegal aliens would receive DREAM Act amnesty. Other versions of the legislation currently before Congress (there are 4 versions that the Democratic leadership is circulating to confuse the issue for voters) are estimated to grant amnesty to over 2.1 million illegal aliens.

Further, neither analysis includes the estimated impact of the costs to be incurred by the “backdoor amnestyâ€

No you cannot afford it; your country is INSOLVANT

and you America are all but dirt broke; you just dont know it yet

I think the people know we are broke but it appears Washington is still in the dark about this............I thought we shed the light on this problem in the November elections

Yep Yep

so how ya gonna pay for it DC .. I want an answer

Pay for it by going to the corner China Pay Day Loan Center with a sky rocketing compounded daily interest rate

or

Let the China REPO Man come get Air Force 1, Air Force 2 and the ever popular Air Force (Pelosi) 3

my as well throw in and Pawn the Fleet of Armored Limo's and the always popular fleet of Presidential Helocopters

or

Have Good ole Ben Print up some more Monopoly Funny Money

Aint no money ... So what kind of Scam / Flim Flam / 3 Card Monte ya got up your sleeve for the tax payers this time