The DREAM Act Is Amnesty

The DREAM Act Is Amnesty
By Tom Tancredo
11/29/2010

For most of us, the holidays are a time for reflection. You would think that the Democrats would take advantage of the opportunity after their latest “shellacking.” Instead, the Party of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama sees the season as just one more opportunity to sneak past legislation to rob the American people of a future.

Even as our troops in Afghanistan fight a growing insurgency, Senate Leader Harry Reid used a defense bill to try to push the so called DREAM act through the lame duck Congress. The Democrats have learned nothing from their historic defeat, and are doubling down on amnesty for illegal aliens.

Shockingly, they are even being assisted by Republican collaborators like Senator Richard Lugar. Since they are unpopular with Americans, the Democrats’ strategy for political survival is essentially a massive voter registration drive for criminals. Meanwhile, RINO’s like Lugar, in pursuing praise from the liberal media and money from corporations lusting for cheap labor, blind themselves to what the Democrats clearly understand. Immigration has finished the GOP in California, where Ronald Reagan was once governor, and amnesty will finish the party as a national force.

Harry Reid is self-interested but, unlike Lugar, is not stupid. His latest piece of chicanery combines a cutsey title and happy talk about “the children” and education to disguise its true intent. Proponents describe the bill as a way to provide a pathway to legal residency for illegal alien “kids” who just want to go to college or serve in the military. However, the true scope of the act is far more broad.

Under the act, illegal aliens under 35 – hardly children – can apply for permanent residency. Any illegal who came to the country before he was sixteen, has been here for five years, and has dodged deportation is rewarded by being allowed to apply if they say they want to go to college or join the military.

As a bonus, illegals will receive in-state tuition under this act. Not only do the Democrats cheapen citizenship, they make it an outright disadvantage. That’s not even the worst part. Because the law has no enforcement mechanisms, an illegal alien simply has to claim that the United States before he or she was sixteen to be eligible. As illegals are, as they themselves like to say, “undocumented,” there is no way to prove the truth or falsity of their claims. There is also no way to prove that an illegal is over 35 and therefore ineligible. The act also leaves intact the “chain migration” system that allows illegals to bring in their entire families. Essentially, the DREAM act is a path to permanent residency for any criminal alien who can plausibly claim to be under 35 – and their entire families.

Make no mistake – the DREAM act is amnesty. All patriotic Americans concerned about crime, education, health care, unemployment, or the staggering budget deficits of states like California that are coping with the illegal immigrant invasion should be outraged that we are even considering this legislation.

In 2006, and 2007, we were able to overcome the leaders of both political parties in the past to stop amnesty. Amnesty advocates know they can’t win if there is an open debate on illegal immigration. If the DREAM act sneaks through the lame duck Congress, apologists for illegals will undo that victory by accomplishing their aims through trickery and deception.

The American people are out of work and out of savings, with paying the bills – never mind college for their children – as a real dream. Rather than lending assistance, the Democrats and Republican collaborators like Lugar are actually taunting them, forcing them to pay for their own dispossession. Democrats caring about actual Americans is the real dream.