Manhattan Moment: Don't even dare to DREAM, Sen. Reid
Before the lame duck Congress goes home, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants it to enact an immigration amnesty bill known as the DREAM Act. The bill's official beneficiaries are among the most sympathetic targets for legalization: illegal immigrants who entered the country as juveniles and who have engaged in some post-secondary education. The DREAM Act, however, is too radical a change in immigration law to be legitimately enacted by a Congress that lacks a current political mandate.
Initially, the DREAM Act would confer conditional legal status on certain illegal immigrants under the age of 35. That status would protect an immigrant from deportation for six years and allow him to drive, work, and receive other benefits as if he had entered the country legally.
Simply by applying for conditional legal status, even if that application is patently frivolous, the immigrant becomes immune from any enforcement proceedings while his application is pending.
To qualify for conditional legal status, the immigrant must have entered the country at age 15 or younger and have resided here for five years, must have earned an American GED or high school diploma, and must have demonstrated "good moral character" merely from the date that the DREAM Act was signed into law--not from the time he entered the country.
The act lists certain felonies that would disqualify an applicant, but it does not define "good moral character." Nothing in the act excludes, for example, a gang member who has pleaded felony charges down to misdemeanors before the act was passed. Even if a judge has previously ordered an immigrant deported on criminal grounds and the immigrant ignored the deportation order, he may still qualify for conditional legal status if he received the deportation order before he was 16.
Once the illegal immigrant receives conditional legal status, he then has six years to complete two years of higher education in order to attain permanent legal status. He need not have earned a bachelor's degree, nor have maintained a high grade-point average. He could have spent three years in remedial classes and the next three accumulating a year's worth of credits in "Chicano studies."
Even the two-year education requirement may be waived if the immigrant shows "compelling circumstances" for failing to meet it or if removal would cause "extremely unusual hardship" to the immigrant or his family. An estimated 2.1 million illegal immigrants are expected to be eligible for permanent legal status under the act; those immigrants can then apply for citizenship and petition for legal status for their siblings and parents.
Though the educational and character requirements of the DREAM Act are indefensibly lax, the core arguments for it are still powerful. A juvenile who was brought into the country illegally by his parent is not responsible for that parent's law-breaking.
The need to create an avenue out of the legal limbo in which such illegal immigrants find themselves through no voluntary act of their own is compelling.
Nevertheless, the act carries a huge potential to further undermine the effort to secure the nation's borders. It broadcasts the message to potential illegal immigrants the world over that the United States is still not serious about its immigration laws.
Though the DREAM Act would apply only to illegal immigrants who were in the country at the date of enactment, every previous amnesty in the U.S. and Europe has attracted new waves of illegal immigrants who rightly assume that if they can just get into their target country, a future amnesty will be on the way.
To minimize this magnet effect, any amnesty must be coupled with increased enforcement measures, such as mandatory worker verification, completion of the border fence, and zero tolerance for all illegal-immigrant criminals. The DREAM Act, however, is a stand-alone piece of legislation.
Congress has yet to hold hearings or take testimony on the act's likely effects. The decision as to whether the benefits of the DREAM Act outweigh the potential costs to the rule of law should be made by representatives with a current electoral mandate, who will suffer political consequences if they defy the voters' will. Sen. Reid should thus table this large-scale amnesty for the next Congress.
Heather MacDonald is a John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
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