Amnesty For ‘Dreamers’ Would Harm Everyone And Kill The Republican Party

This week two illegal aliens have been arrested in separate incidents for human trafficking in California. Democrats call them “Dreamers.” The rest of America sees them for what they are: criminals.

The trouble with euphemisms is that reality always catches up. Then the (Chico) Marxist asks, “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Democrats have labeled a massive group of illegal aliens brought to the United States under the age of 18 as “Dreamers.” Barack Obama unconstitutionally protected them from deportation through his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. But as Democrat Minority Whip Steny Hoyer points out, “Dreamers” are not synonymous with DACA recipients. DACA protects only a certain group of illegal aliens brought to the United States as minors: those born after June 15, 1981, who have lived in the United States continuously since June 15, 2007, and registered for the program between June 2012 and September 2017. The program covers 800,000 illegal aliens — a mere fraction of illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as minors.

Two weeks ago, USA Today gave a fuller story. The real number of illegal aliens brought over as children sits around 3.6 million, four and a half times as many as Democrats want to admit. That’s an estimated third of all illegal aliens in the U.S., and it doesn’t count the millions of immediate family members who are already citizens. Democrats are keen on obscuring the statistics because amnesty would destroy the Republican Party. According to Pew Research, Hispanics are five times as likely to identify with Democrats as with the GOP. Well over four times as many Hispanic voters registered with the Democrats as with Republicans. Hispanics who don’t identify with either party are two and a quarter times more likely to lean Democrat. Native born Hispanics are 4.4 times as likely to identify with Democrats, while foreign born Hispanics are 5.6 times as likely to identify with Democrats.

Ronald Reagan used to observe that Hispanics are Republicans who just don’t know it yet, presumably because they work hard and go to church, two traits anathema to Democrats. He may have been right, but the data show it will likely take Hispanic voters a long time to realize it. If the United States offers amnesty to 3.6 million new likely Democrat voters, there may not be a Republican Party around by the time they do.

Foreign-born Hispanics who have lived in the U.S. for less than 10 years are just under three times as likely to identify Democrat as Republican. That number jumps to 8.75 times as likely for Hispanics who have lived in the U.S. for 10 to 14 years. That statistic holds around 8.2 times as likely for Hispanics who have lived here for 15 to 19 years, and it drops to a still-terrifying 5.4 times as likely for Hispanics who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more.

John Maynard Keynes observed, “In the long run we are all dead.” Amnesty will inevitably hasten that timeline for the Republican Party. Democrats even admit as much, as a leaked memo by former Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri from the Center for American Progress Action Fund showed earlier this month, explaining that amnesty for illegal aliens constitutes a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”

Barack Obama’s former domestic policy director Cecillia Munoz insists, “The right policy is to be as generous as possible. We know the success of DACA. It’s good for the country, and this has overwhelming support around the country from people on both sides of the aisle. There’s no reason to limit who is eligible.” But according to a 2017 poll by Morning Consult and Politico, just 29% of Americans think giving illegal aliens brought to the U.S. under the age of 18 should be a policy priority, leaving 71% of Americans who do not want amnesty. Just 44% of Democrat voters say amnesty for DACA recipients should be a priority for Congress. Even the majority of Democrats oppose amnesty.

In recent years, the U.S. foreign-born population has reached record highs, hitting 43.2 million in 2015. That number has steadily climbed since 1965, when famed drunk driver Ted Kennedy sponsored legislation replacing the national quota system with our current, incoherent immigration regime. Since that time the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Immigrants today account for 13.4% of the U.S. population — triple the immigrant share of the total population in 1970. The foreign-born percentage of the population hasn’t reached such heights since 1890, which followed a half-century period that gave us 4.5 million Irish immigrants, including many wonderful families and the Kennedys.

Partisan considerations aside, amnesty is unconstitutional, expensive, and dangerous for American citizen and illegal alien alike. Barack Obama himself has admitted that executive amnesty actions like DACA are unconstitutional. As a matter of federal spending and taxpayer resources, immigrant-led households are far more likely than native-led households to receive welfare. According to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates lower levels of immigration to the U.S., the majority of immigrant-led households receive at least one welfare benefit such as Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, or school lunches. That number drops to 30% for households led by native-born Americans. For families with children, 76% of immigrant-led households receive welfare compared to 52% of households led by native-born Americans. A quarter of so-called “Dreamers” can’t read, and nearly half speak little if any English.

According to a study from the Crime Prevention Research Center by John R. Lott, in Arizona alone illegal aliens are 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other Arizonans. They also tend to commit more serious crimes and serve 10.5% longer sentences. Illegal aliens are more likely to be classified as dangerous, and they’re 45% more likely to be gang members than U.S. citizens. Young people commit crime at higher rates across demographic groups, but young illegal aliens commit crime at twice the rate of young U.S. citizens. Lott also notes that these numbers likely underestimate the share of crime committed by illegal aliens. The federal government is notoriously protective of statistics on crime committed by illegal aliens, but the Government Accountability Office found a 40% and 25% increase respectively of criminal alien incarcerations in state jails and prisons between 2003 and 2009.

Perhaps the most damning statistic of all comes from the left-wing outlets Fusion and the Huffington Post. According to a Fusion investigation, 80% of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during the journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60%, given by Amnesty International. Mass amnesty would incentivize a tidal wave of new illegal crossings, inevitably accompanied by an epidemic of sexual assault against vulnerable women and girls.

Amnesty presents a travesty for the federal budget, the constitutional order, American democratic institutions, and the personal safety of both citizens and illegal aliens. It would also end the Republican Party. So Democrats support it, country be damned.