http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/25 ... ihan-salam

I don’t find Michael Gerson’s arguments concerning the Dream Act very persuasive:

Critics counter that the law would be a reward for illegal behavior and an incentive for future lawbreaking. But these immigrants, categorized as illegal, have done nothing illegal. They are condemned to a shadow existence entirely by the actions of their parents. And the Dream Act is not an open invitation for future illegal immigrants to bring their minors to America. Only applicants who have lived in America continuously for five years before enactment of the law would qualify.

But what of the billions of children condemned to relative poverty because their parents chose not to become unauthorized immigrants? According to Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett, migration is a highly effective means of achieving poverty reduction. An extraordinary 26 percent of people born in Haiti who live beyond the two-dollar-a-day standard live in the United States.

As I understand it, the DREAM Act implicitly tells us that I should value the children of unauthorized immigrants more than the children of other people living in impoverished countries. If we assume that all human beings merit equal concern, this is obviously nonsensical. Indeed, all controls on migration are suspect under that assumption...
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