The DREAM is Dead! Long live the (American) Dream!

This past weekend the United States Senate killed the DREAM Act.  Apparently the voices of Americans across our nation made certain that they got enough members of the United State Senate to listen to them and kill wrong-headed legislation that was wrong on many levels. First of all, the DREAM Act was concocted to deceive the citizens of our nation by the use of illusory language.  As I have noted in previous commentaries, the DREAM Act was obviously so-named to conjure up images of the “American Dream.”  The desire to invoke this romantic image was so strong that the architects of the bill were even willing to use the term “Alien” in the name of this legislative nightmare–a word that advocates for open borders and sweeping amnesty for millions of illegal aliens had all but stricken from the English vernacular except for its use in science fiction movies. The bill was falsely sold as a legislative solution to the dilemma that a relative few illegal alien “children” found themselves in when their parents brought them across our nation’s borders without their permission and now, they cannot return to their native countries because they were very young when they left and now consider the U.S. to be home.  Of course, once you understand that the bill initially called for aliens up to their 35^th birthday to participate and that they would have to have entered our country prior to their 16^th birthday you realize that aliens in their mid-30s could have participated in the DREAM Act.  Aliens who would have left their home countries at age 15 would undoubtedly have acquired excellent language skills so that should they return home they would have no problem communicating. We must also remember that all that stood in the way of the DREAM Act was a small margin of senators who did what was essential–they voted against this legislative betrayal. Time and again bills have been proposed to provide millions upon millions of illegal aliens with amnesty and a pathway to United States citizenship.  Time and time again these bills were narrowly defeated.  Nearly four years ago I suggested that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act be given a more honest and descriptive name; I recommended calling it the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act!” After this last close call with amnesty I have come to think of it as the “Freddy Krueger Act.” It keeps on arising from the dead not unlike the mythical Phoenix.  My concern is that far too many members of Congress who voted against the DREAM Act said that before they would sign off on such a bill the border needs to be secured.  Stop and think what this means–if by playing the numbers games that Washington is all too good at, if arrest number plummet along the border and the administration succeeds in claiming that this demonstrates that the border is secure–will those shaky members of the Congress who stood with us on the DREAM Act switch sides? Amnesty for millions of illegal aliens is absolutely wrong, no matter what the politicians may say.  There are provisions for permitting limited numbers of illegal aliens to be granted lawful status for a host of humanitarian reasons.  The issue is that our nation cannot, should not, and must not simply confer lawful status on millions of aliens whose presence in our country represents a violation of our borders and our laws.  The issue is not whether or not the border is secure but that there would not be any way of determining who an applicant for lawful status is.  Also unknown would be the backgrounds of these individuals.  We would have no way of knowing about their potential affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations.  We would not know their true nationalities and even whether or not they are fugitives from other countries. Furthermore, it has been estimated that more than one half of the world’s population lives below the poverty level.  The solution to world poverty is not permit as many tens of millions or hundreds of millions of the world’s poor to head to the United States to turn the United States into a country where the standard of living for the average American would be indistinguishable from the standard of living of aliens residing in Third World countries. The United States of America has, for nearly the past 100 years, been the nation that the other nations of the world looked to for help whenever tyranny raised its ugly head in countries across the globe.  In creating the “American Dream” our nation has served as the role model for the other countries.  Simply stated, the concept of the “American Dream” is that in America, anyone could succeed.  Acquire the education or skills, add in a bit of entrepreneurship and a dash of chutzpah and anything is possible for anyone to achieve. This is why for generations, each generation of Americans expected to surpass the success of the generation that preceded it.  This gave rise to the large and upwardly mobile middle class that made this nation so unique and so great. By importing cheap and exploitable labor and by undercutting Americans who strive to achieve by outsourcing jobs and minimizing the value of education and then failing to make certain that a good education is a birthright for all Americans because we no longer to educate our citizens but rather import educated foreign workers, we dismantle America’s middle class and in so doing, the American Dream. The DREAM Act may have sought to conjure up the image of the American Dream when in reality, this amnesty program and others like it would serve to undermine the American Dream for Americans of all ethnicities, religions and races. While immigration built this nation, uncontrolled and illegal immigration would just as certainly destroy this nation. The failure of the DREAM Act marks simply another success in attempting to protect the American Dream for Americans, a dream that is, nevertheless, becoming all too elusive for far too many citizens of our nation.