The White House decision to enact the DREAM Act through executive fiat is a lawless act. This isn’t even about immigration; it’s about the Constitution.
I have repeatedly written that something like DREAM has much to recommend it, though it would need to be very different from the current iteration, which has been voted down in Congress several times. I understand that Sen. Marco Rubio has finally put together a final version of his alternative bill and that Senators Kyl and Hutchison have signed on — from my discussions with his staff, I probably won’t like what he’s come up with, but unless there are typos in my version of Article I of the Constitution, that’s the way lawmaking is supposed work. For all the administration’s pious denials that this measure “confers no substantive right” and “Only the Congress, acting through its legislative authority, can confer these rights”, they’re lying. The illegal immigrants in question will receive two-year renewable permits to live legally in the United States and an Employment Authorization Document — that, in English, is what we call “amnesty”.
Any DREAM Act supporter who applauds this measure has forfeited any right to complain about future usurpation of the Constitution. Even backers of DREAM in Congress have a responsibility to deny funding to DHS to carry out this policy.
