Senate Democrats led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) shut down the government last weekend, ostensibly in defense of “Dreamers”—illegal aliens who arrived in the United States as minors. The Democrats, in effect, placed the progressive political project “above our national security, military families, vulnerable children, and our country’s ability to serve all Americans,” as a White House press release put it.
This new and virtuous Schumer of 2018 stands in stark contrast with the Schumer of 2013, who vehemently denounced those who would “risk default for the nation” by shutting down the government over immigration. He called such obstinance the “politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.” But that was before Trump and #TheResistance.
Just who are these “Dreamers” the Democrats are using as political props? The name comes from the proposed 2001 Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which has failed to pass repeatedly over the years. By most estimates, some 3.6 million illegal immigrants came to this country as children. Of that number, around 800,000 registered under the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Americans have been fed a line that Dreamers are among our “best and brightest,” but the reality is much different. While DACA and Dreamer are used interchangeably, the distinction makes a difference. DACA recipients are a subset of the Dreamers, and the soldiers and scholars among the DACA class are an even smaller subset. More importantly, even though the shutdown fight was reportedly about DACA, the Democrats aren’t simply seeking amnesty for those 800,000 program participants. They want all 3.6 million Dreamers included in the deal. A look at the bigger picture of what this might mean is sobering.
In Arizona, DACA recipient Francisco Rios-Covarrubias, 30, was arrested after offering a 3-year-old girl for sex to a man who notified authorities, the child was discovered bound with duct tape and showed signs of repeated sexual abuse.