DREAM Act a flawed amnesty
By Phil Kent

The usual propaganda is again being rolled out urging Congress to pass the DREAM Act that would grant amnesty to Kennesaw State University’s Jessica Colotl and countless other illegal alien students who arrived as children with their parents when they snuck across our border. Unfortunately, as sympathetic as we might be for such young people with compelling human interest stories, the DREAM Act is so full of loopholes that passage would result in a nightmare for our nation.

Perhaps if the DREAM Act drew the lines more narrowly as to who could stay—especially if it really covered just children who have grown up culturally and psychologically as Americans over the past 15 years or so, it might garner more support. But this legislation contains major flaws.

Anyone who claims to meet the criteria for the amnesty under the act must be granted legal status unless the government spends the time and money to prove that they don’t. This means every state would be stuck with hundreds of thousands of illegals who would receive a “get out of jail free” card, and who will be counting on the fact that the government doesn’t have the resources to check whether the flood of applications are legitimate or fraudulent.

Numbers USA researcher Jeremy Beck underscores the important national security impact:

“The DREAM Act would prevent the Department of Homeland Security from deporting aliens who’ve applied for the amnesty until their applications are resolved—and if DHS eventually decides that some aliens do not qualify for the amnesty, DHS cannot use the statements aliens made in their applications to deport them, because their statements are protected by the confidentiality section in the act. Savvy criminals could halt or slow their deportations long enough to be released back into the general population.”

Furthermore, if the DREAM ACT is passed, millions of its beneficiaries would then be able to eventually sponsor parents and other relatives to legally come here— including those adults who originally broke the law and put the young DREAM Act recipient in their current tight spot. Each of these family members could then sponsor their extended family. So why would Congress, especially as the country faces years of high national unemployment, want to expand the number of newcomers who would further strain everything ranging from our schools to our healthcare system?

The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 2.1 million people would be eligible for the DREAM Act legalization. But that estimate obviously does not take into account this Third World chain migration trigger buried in the legislation.

The open borders lobby loves the DREAM Act because it does nothing to prevent parents from anywhere in the world from bringing their children here illegally. The law would enable the children get a kindergarten through 12th grade education, welfare and other services all at taxpayer expense— and it then simply puts them in the same untenable position as Jessica Colotl is now.

The DREAM Act would be the eighth legislative amnesty for millions of illegal aliens since 1986, and all too many of those recipients haven’t bothered to learn English proficiently or assimilate into the overall culture. As columnist George Will notes, we’ve “imported poverty” be amnestying millions who earn less than $10,000 a year and who have less than an eighth grade education. Why should Congress grant yet another mass amnesty that will only serve as a magnet for more illegal immigrants to come here?

Phil Kent of Atlanta is national spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control