5 Reasons Dreamers&" Shouldnt Be Given Amnesty

By John Hawkins Theres an old legal saying that goes Hard cases make bad law." Essentially what that means is that when you try to take an extreme case and use it as the basis for general laws the end product doesnt work very well. In this case when you try to take the most sympathetic group of illegal aliens and craft a law around them its going to create a huge mess. Setting aside the fact that illegals of any age are breaking the law and that could be the entire list 1-5 there are a number of other reasons that young illegal aliens should not be allowed to stay. 1) The Dreamers" are mostly adults not children or teens. Many people seem to believe Dreamers" are little kids. Actually only 22 of them are even below the age of 25 according to the Department of Homeland Security. Moreover there are Dreamers" as old as THIRTY SIX eligible under the largely unverifiable requirements of the program. So were not talking about kids and were not talking about children. In some cases were talking about people whove spent more than a decade knowingly breaking our immigration laws as adults. Why would we want to give amnesty to someone like that? 2) Kids get punished for things their parents do all the time. If mom and dad sneak their kid into a waterpark without paying they ALL get kicked out at the same time. Why should it be any different with our country? If an American man commits an armed robbery he doesnt get to avoid jail time because theres a kid at home who will be deprived of his daddy. If mom is an alcoholic dad refuses to work or both of them are weirdos who think little Sally needs to have gender reassignment surgery because she likes to play with trucks the kids suffer. This is life and the idea that the government can fix every mistake parents make with their kids is unworkable and foolish.  Thats doubly true when youre talking about adults. Americans typically dont get a pass for breaking the law when theyre adults because mommy and daddy werent good parents when they were kids. Dreamers" shouldnt get one either. 3) Republicans are giving up on making a real deal before theyve even started. I am adamantly against illegal immigration and think it would be a huge mistake to legalize Dreamers." Unfortunately the GOP seems hell-bent on doing it no matter what conservatives think.  Theoretically this might make sense because since this is a group of people Democrats care about desperately its the best chance well ever have to actually get them to cooperate on serious anti-immigration measures. At a minimum we should ask for funding of a wall taking E-Verify national as well as a merit-based immigration system and tough anti-illegal immigration measures before Dreamers" get legal status not citizenship. Getting even half of that would be something the GOP could brag about after years of failure on the issue. Unfortunately Donald Trump has already confirmed that hes not going to demand a wall in return for Dreamers." Worse yet hes said that hell take care of the Dreamers" no matter what already amnesty loving Republicans like John McCain and Paul Ryan do in Congress. In other words even though this is the best chance Republicans will ever have to come to an agreement on immigration theyve given away all of their leverage before theyve even gotten started. What that means is were likely to see the GOP get some minor face-saving security measures while the Democrats will get whatever they want in return (which will certainly mean bringing in a lot more illegals than are currently included under DACA). Granted Trump being Trump might change his mind and decide to play hardball on the issue but at the moment it looks like another typical bipartisan" deal is in the works that will end up with liberal Democrats getting 90 of what they want while people who believe in putting Americans first get the shaft. 4) Many of the Dreamers" are not who you think they are. If you listen to the way young illegals are described in the press youd think they are all 11 year olds who were brought here when they were three or young geniuses acing college. However Dreamers" are much less educated than American kids. Twenty one percent drop out of high school compared to 5.9 of American kids. Twenty two percent of those of age have bachelors degrees compared to 32 of Americans. Some of them arent all that young either. The cutoff for DACA was 31 years of age on June 15 2012. In other words there are 36 year old Dreamers" whod be eligible for permanent residence if theyre not even older. When people are here illegally without documentation how do you really know their age? How do you know they arrived here before they were 16 (which is a DACA requirement)? Its not shocking that some estimates put the level of fraud in the program as high as 50. On top of all that eligible illegals can be high school drop outs have up to two misdemeanor convictions and are not required to speak English. Do any of those groups sound like people we should want living here long term? 5) It will encourage more illegals to bring their kids here. When you reward lawbreaking with amnesty you get more lawbreaking. When Obama announced his DACA policy a surge of illegal children came over the border. The same thing would happen again if we legalize young illegals except it would be much more sustained. After all if were actually changing the law so that young illegals will get to stay why wouldnt every illegal bring his kid? Thats especially true since we have an immigration system that rewards family ties not merit. Bring the kid over today and even if you are kicked out now hell get to stay and bring you in later. Besides is there anyone who believes we can ignore the law this time but then 10 years from now kick millions of illegals out of the country who supposedly came here as children? Its not going to happen because were setting a precedent for ignoring the law in this situation. Either were going to enforce the law or were going to have this exact same problem down the road except even worse. Ronald Reagan was suckered into a one-time" amnesty in return for promises of security that were never delivered. How can Republicans in Congress be so stupid as to learn nothing from his example? Fool us once shame on you. Fool us twice shame on us.