UPDATE: Sen. Reid to Allow a Vote on DREAM Act
It's now official, Sen. Harry Reid will add the DREAM Act to the Department of Defense Authorization bill when it comes to the Senate floor over the next few weeks. Sen. Reid acknowledges that passing a "comprehensive immigration reform" bill with a mass amnesty is impossible, but he believes he can garner enough bi-partisan support to pass an amnesty for illegal alien high school students and graduates.
Univision is reporting that Sen. Reid is contacting both Democratic and Republican Senators trying to get the 60 votes needed to pass the bill.
In an interview with El Tiempo, the Spanish language version of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Reid said...
...I will keep fighting for it. I have five or six calls I need to make to Republicans senators to see if they will work with me on this. I will call them to see if they are willing to support this.
The DREAM Act (S.729) was offered by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and has 38 cosponsors who are still in the Senate. Supporters of the DREAM Act say it would provide amnesty for illegal aliens who are under the age of 35 and attended high school in the United States, hold either a high school diploma or GED, and attend a U.S. college or serve in the military for at least two years.
However, what DREAM Act supporters won't tell you is that illegal aliens who qualify for the Amnesty immediately jump to the front of the citizenship line, and once legalized, they can sponsor their extended family members for citizenship through current chain migration laws.
There is also no end date for the DREAM Act, so the bill would provide a permanent magnet for future illegal immigration. It would also lift the current federal ban on offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens, meaning illegal aliens will receive a lower tuition rate at state colleges and universities than U.S. citizens from another state. Furthermore, the DREAM Act contains no provisions for increasing border security and interior enforcement and provides no verification mechanism for illegal aliens who say they qualify for the DREAM Act Amnesty.
For more information on the DREAM Act, download our Fact Sheet.
The DREAM Act in the 111th Congress
The Nightmare Is in the Details
The DREAM Act has been reintroduced in both the House (H.R. 1751, by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA)) and the Senate (S. 729, by Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL). Several cosponsors of the legislation have referred to the DREAM Act as a “narrow” proposal to deal only with the children brought here illegally by their illegal-alien parents. Unfortunately, the facts belie that claim. Here are the essentials of what the bills would do:
- They retroactively repeal the federal ban on in-state tuition for illegal aliens, so individual states would decide whether to grant this subsidy to illegal aliens at the expense of U.S. citizens and legal residents.
- They require DHS to award amnesty to every illegal alien claiming to meet minimal criteria: 1) present in the U.S. for the last five years; 2) a U.S. high school diploma or GED, or admitted to a U.S. institution of higher learning; and 3) of “good moral character” with no more than 2 misdemeanor convictions.
- The Senate version also requires that amnesty applicants be under 35 years of age and not be subject to a final order of removal or exclusion.
- Neither version requires specific documentation or other proof that amnesty applicants actually meet these minimal criteria.
- Once an alien files an amnesty application, he or she cannot be removed from the United States for any reason until the application is fully processed and a final decision to grant or deny amnesty has been made.
- All amnesty applications go to the front of the line for processing, thus bypassing millions of people around the world who have applied to come to the United States the right way.
- In order to deny any amnesty application, the federal government has the burden of proving an illegal alien’s ineligibility for amnesty.
- There are no numerical limits to the amnesty and there’s no end date for the application process.
- Amnestied aliens are required to complete two years of college or military service during their first six years of legal residence, but DHS can waive the requirement or grant additional time to comply for those who do not.
- At the end of the six years, amnestied aliens can apply for citizenship and petition to bring their extended relatives—including the parents who brought them here illegally—to the United States.
- Amnesty beneficiaries are eligible for certain federal student loans and work-study programs.