Friday, June 7, 2019
How DREAMERS Became A Scam
By Margaret Orchowski
On Tuesday June 4 the House unexpectedly passed HR6, the Dream Act of 2019. According to the New York Times and the Washington Post et.al, HR6 would give a pathway to citizenship to thousands of immigrants who were brought into the country by their parents illegally as children.
HR6 will not become law. It probably won't even be introduced in the Senate. That's because The Dream Act of 2019 is frankly a scam.
Poll after poll show that almost all Americans are sympathetic to the idea of legalizing foreign-born children who were brought innocently into the country at an early age, have lived in the U.S. most all their lives, are successful high school graduates but then found out they do not have legal immigration status and are subject to deportation. Of course Americans want to help those particular young people.
But HR6 goes way way way beyond that group. In fact not one word of the common definition of DREAMERS – small children brought in illegally by their parents who have lived here most of their lives – exists in the Dream Act of 2019"
In fact HR6 would give a green card to anyone who entered the country before the age of 18 and had been here for (only) four years before the date of it becoming law.
The HR6 DREAMER doesn't have to have been brought into the country by their parents. They could come in alone or with a traffiker or a false relative (as did star DREAMER and former Washington Post intern Jose Antonio Vargas).
HR6 DREAMERS don't have to have been a little child clinging to their parents' hands when they came in, as is shown in almost every graphic about the Dream Act. In fact the vast majority of children coming into the U.S. are teenagers ages 15-18 years old.
DREAMERS don't have to come in illegally. Almost half of all illegal immigrants in the United States today entered on legal temporary permits, as tourists or dependents of high skilled workers, through legal ports of entry such as airports. Under HR6, temporary visa holders can then purposely and knowingly overstay their expired permits and apply for DREAMER status and a green card as an "undocumented" immigrant without going through the legal immigration process.
HR6 DREAMERS don't have to have graduated from high school. Enrollment in an "equivalent" degree program is accepted as an equivalent.
DREAMERs don't even have to know English. There is no English language requirement in HR6.
A DREAMER can be a convicted criminal – but only three times, then they no long qualify.
A DREAMER can be in their 40s or 50s to apply too. HR6 has no upper age limit.
Under these parameters, HR6 would allow over 4 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to get a green card. (It also allows for thousands of legal immigrants on temporary protected status permits to get permanent legalization as well, but that's besides the four million DREAMERS).
The language in the Dream Act of 2019 is fairly free of legalize. Most reporters and editors should be able to read it easily. If they have followed Dream Act politics at all, reporters should be able to see that DREAMERS have become a serious bait-and switch for other immigration agendas: ie: for Dems a way to legalize almost anyone who is illegally in the country and for Republicans, an exchange coinage for a wall and other costly immigration enforcement items.
In fact, anyone who reads HR6 can see now that the concept of the innocent child DREAMER has become a scam.
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“We can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been”. Vice President of the Brookings Institution Darrell West wrote in recommending Peggy Sands Orchowski’s books "The Law That Changed The Face of America: The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965" and "Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 and 2008 respectively). Peggy is a credentialed Senior Congressional journalist in Washington DC. She is available for interviews, article assignments and speaking engagements about immigration porchowski@hotmail.com