Senators Reintroduce The Nightmarish Dream Act Again
By Jennifer G. Hickey | March 29, 2019
A little more than a week after supporting President Trump’s national emergency declaration to address the crisis on the southern border, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) joined forces with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to reintroduce the Dream Act, the exceedingly expensive mass amnesty bill that will exacerbate the border crisis.
As of today, the text is not yet available for measure, but it is unlikely it will be an improvement on the massive amnesty Dream Act of 2017. As FAIR wrote of the previous Graham-Durbin effort, it is “nearly guaranteed to spur additional mass illegal immigration to the United States.”
The Dream Act would allow young adults to remain present in the United States if they arrived as children, graduated from high school or obtained a GED, and pursued college, military service or at least three years of employment. The bill’s sponsors also claim they will be required to pass a background check and pay a reasonable application fee.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, as many as 3.5 million illegal aliens could have been eligible for amnesty under the requirements of the 2017 bill.
As Dan Stein, president of FAIR, rightly noted in a press release, “Rather than providing more resources to secure our borders and addressing the wholesale abuse of our asylum policies, the DREAM Act would provide new incentives for people to bring or send their kids to the United States illegally.”
To make immigration matters worse, that same day, Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (CA), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and Tim Kaine (Va.) introduced the Safe Environment from Countries Under Repression and in Emergency (SECURE) Act, which would allow aliens in the country under Temporary Permanent Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) to apply for permanent status.
TPS is a provision under which protection from deportation is granted to people from certain countries afflicted by natural disasters, war, or other dangerous conditions.
Earlier this month, House Democrats introduced H.R. 6, American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, which is a combination of the Dream Act and SECURE Act, which essentially envelops both Senate bills into one mass amnesty bill. According to the University of Southern California’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, the H.R. 6 would grant amnesty to up to 2.5 million immigrants. But that is an incredibly conservative number considering this bill has no age limit and no end date.
In case there were any question the efforts in Congress are not driven by politics and animosity toward the Trump Administration’s enforcement of immigration laws, the bill’s main sponsor gave us an answer.
According to Roll Call, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) included both TPS and DED protections in the new Dream Act “because President Trump’s cruel and reckless actions have increased the urgency to address these issues and protect these individuals in our communities.”
As more details emerge on the language of the Dream Act of 2019, we shall provide updates.