Much of the media coverage surrounding President Trump’s decision to end the unconstitutional and illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has referred to DACA recipients as “Dreamers.” That term refers to the ill-fated Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) originally introduced by Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch in 2001. DACA and the DREAM Act are two different versions of the same bad idea. Here’s what Americans need to know:
- The DREAM Act is just another amnesty program: First introduced in 2001, the DREAM Act was pitched as a measure to “protect” children who were brought here unlawfully by their illegal alien parents. In reality, it was just another attempt to move closer to a blanket amnesty that would grant illegal aliens a path to citizenship, rewarding them for breaking our immigration laws.
- The DEAM Act has never passed, despite multiple attempts to ram it through Congress: Voters made their opinions about the DREAM Act known, legislators listened, and the bill failed. In fact, every attempt to pass the DREAM Act has failed.
- Even though it has repeatedly failed to pass, the DREAM Act won’t die: The most recent versions of the Dream Act were introduced, in July 2017, in the Senate by Lindsay Graham and Dick Durbin and in the House by Lucille Roybal-Allard and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Each version of the DREAM Act has expanded the classes of people who would be amnestied.
- DACA = DREAM Act lite: When the DREAM Act failed President Obama tried to impose a watered-down version of it, without the consent of the American people. His unconstitutional DACA enabled almost 800,000 illegal aliens to work, attend school and collect government-funded benefits in the U.S., but it did not grant any permanent benefits.
- The latest version of the DREAM Act would amnesty millions: If DACA were written into law by Congress, it would grant amnesty to a large group of illegal aliens, roughly 600,000-800,000. But the DREAM Act would amnesty as many as 3.3 million people.
As part of its never-ending attempt to achieve a blanket amnesty for all illegal aliens, the anti-borders lobby wants the public to believe that DACA and the DREAM Act are one and the same. Then they can argue, “Well, we’ve already had the DREAM Act under DACA and the sky didn’t fall, let’s just make it a law.”
DACA was bad enough, but it was only temporary. Let’s not get stuck with a much more lenient, and more permanent, version of that misguided program because the illegal alien defenders snuck in the DREAM Act. If the DREAM Act were to pass, it’s only a short step to a blanket amnesty and the virtual erasure of America’s borders.
Should President Trump do a “DACA deal,” he should insist on getting real enforcement and true immigration reform for the American people in return. And any deal should be limited to current DACA recipients, with no criminal record. We live in the United States of America, not the United States of Amnesty.