Arguments against the DREAM Act

Ira Mehlman of FAIR offers "DREAM Over: Illegal Alien Student Amnesty Awakens to Fiscal Reality" (link, copy here).

Excerpt below, and note also that one of the best ways to reduce illegal immigration is to discredit those politicians who support the DREAM Act by asking them questions like this one on video.

Advocates for illegal aliens believe that the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act offers them their best hope to enact a mini-amnesty. The DREAM Act would confer amnesty on most illegal alien youths and just about anyone who could vaguely be described as a student, and guarantee them subsidized in-state tuition rates in their states of residence on the premise that as children, they are not responsible for being in the country illegally. It would also result in a de facto amnesty for many parents, and entitle these kids to sponsor other relatives in the future.

...Nearly every state has increased tuition rates and cut programs, and it's still not enough. "We have put the education system on a starvation diet, and each and every year it becomes weaker," said California's Lt. Governor (John Garamendi). University of California Chancellor Charles Reed has publicly discussed exercising his authority to cut enrollment.

...Passage of the federal DREAM Act would put every starving, malnourished, or merely hungry state higher education system in the same predicament as California's...

...Backing the DREAM Act would be a body blow to the interests of the people who actually did elect Barack Obama: America's embattled middle class...

...Because of the economic and fiscal realities that he will soon inherit, President Obama will be compelled to make decisions that are painful to a broad swath of the electorate. If the pain is dispensed equitably the public is likely to be understanding and forgiving. If hard-working, law-abiding Americans are asked to sacrifice while people who broke our laws are rewarded and political pressure groups are paid off, the reaction will quite different especially if it hurts their own kids.

Sun, 12/28/2008 - 15:21 · · Importance: 4