Here is Victor Davis Hanson writing the facts about the “Dreamer’ fight at the Los Angeles Times:
The loud fight over what will happen to America’s “Dreamers” isn’t what it seems. For both sides, it’s a fig leaf used to mask their true intentions.
In his first term, Barack Obama admitted that he had no constitutional authority (“I’m president, I’m not king”) to grant amnesties. Yet during his campaign for reelection in 2012 he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which conferred a temporary reprieve from deportation to young people brought to this country as minors.
Now Democrats are demanding the preservation and institutionalization of the DACA program. One day soon, they will likely demand its expansion. They do not control either house of Congress or the presidency. They do not enjoy a majority of state legislatures and governorships. To get their way, they are counting on either favorable public opinion or threats to shut down the government.
Democrats are so focused on the 800,000 Dreamers — less than 10% of the undocumented population — because they’re politically photogenic and for now seen as the easiest group to exempt from efforts to control illegal immigration. In blanket fashion, the media consistently report that they are model youth, fulfilling their proverbial “dreams” of finishing college and achieving upward mobility.
That narrative lacks subtlety, if it’s not outright deceptive. The average age of DACA participants is now 24. Few after entering adulthood sought to address their known illegal status. Surveys suggest that most are not in school; fewer than 5% have graduated from college. Those employed earn a median hourly wage of $15.34, which means they are forced to compete on the lower end of the wage ladder. Only about a tenth of 1% of DACA youth serve in the U.S. military — fewer than 900 total.
Read more: Los Angeles Times
Image credit: www.latimes.com.
