Dream Act Makes Children Pawns

Investor's Business Daily
December 8, 2010

Congress is expected to vote on the Dream Act on Wednesday, providing a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrant youth.

It's a very bad precedent that uses kids, costs taxpayers and invites new amnesties.

After years of failing to sell mass amnesty to voters, the open-borders lobby has turned to tugging at Americans' heartstrings, presenting treacly stories of illegal immigrants brought here as children who then bettered themselves here.

Somehow legalizing this group ahead of all the other people awaiting immigration visas legally is supposed to specially benefit all of us, even though the most obvious beneficiaries are the illegal immigrant individuals themselves.

But out of guilt, or because we "owe" them "justice," the case is being made for passing the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.

This act provides a path to citizenship for some 2.1 million illegals who have lived here continuously for five years, avoided felony convictions, came to the U.S. before they turned 16 and completed two years of college or U.S. military service within six years.

Now, in the lame-duck session of Congress, the open-borders lobby has lawmakers right where it wants them.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has filed Senate cloture to bring the Dream Act to a vote as soon as Wednesday, and the House may vote even sooner.

It's an outright scam, using children unethically to achieve an open-borders political agenda that opens the door to perverse incentives.

The Dream Act is an effort to mimic the benefits illegals derive from having anchor babies in the U.S., a tactic used by millions as an "insurance policy" to avoid deportation and achieve legal status.

The awfulness of this incentive can be seen in the case of Edgar Jimenez Lugo, the 14-year-old U.S. "citizen" who was arrested in Mexico after a rather spectacular career beheading rivals and innocent people for $2,500 each on behalf of a Mexican cartel enforcer.

Cronica, a Mexican newspaper, reported that the throwaway kid was born in San Diego and then spent his life with Mexican parents who took him back to Morelos, Mexico, and "wandered around."

Apparently the child's birth in San Diego was the same gambit millions of other illegal immigrants use to game the system for U.S. entry.

And he's only facing three years in jail in Mexico, so he'll soon become our problem -- not Mexico's.

The Dream Act makes every baby an anchor baby, commodifying children, as young Jimenez seems to have been. It extends the incentive for parents to use their kids to beat immigration laws.

Under the Dream Act it may take 10 years for an illegal to achieve full U.S. citizenship, but there's little doubt he will.

And as soon as he does achieve citizenship, he will sponsor the parents who brought him into the country illegally -- thus achieving the original intention of the law-breaking parents.

This bill is really and only an amnesty bill.

The 1986 amnesty signed by President Reagan provided amnesty to 2.7 million illegals. Now, 24 years on, we have 12 million illegals to amnesty.

Columnist Michelle Malkin points to six successive amnesties since the 1986 act. Each has raised anticipation of new ones for illegals. For them, no need to hurry for the amnesty train -- the next one will be along in just a moment.

Worse, the Dream Act will cost a lot. By some estimates it's a $6.2 billion bill for taxpayers, but it may be even more. Judges over the years have already ruled that children of illegals are entitled to "free" U.S. public education through the 12 th grade, plus "free" medical care, bankrupting hospital emergency rooms.

The Dream Act will give them even more.

With a treasured U.S. green card as motivation, all they have to do is clog up community college enrollments with no minimum performance standards, crowding out legitimate students who are interested in learning, or else sign up for diploma-mill trade schools with government loans they aren't under any obligation to repay.

For every Harvard valedictorian the illegal immigration lobby presents as a poster boy, there will be thousands of gang members who will qualify because the cops haven't caught them yet.

Worst of all is the illegal immigrant entitlement mentality this bill creates.

Suddenly the U.S. taxpayer "owes" all this, as the brazen illegal immigrant students parading around in graduation robes for cameras without fear of apprehension make clear.

This entitlement mentality is no success ethic. And it won't stop at the Dream Act.

It just underscores the disgusting ethic of special interests playing grievance and identity politics by using children as pawns.

The only good answer to this is absolutely no.

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