Carrying Water in a Sieve

Politicians of all stripes (including Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and, now, Rand Paul) are falling all over one another to construct a way for illegal aliens to finally achieve U.S. citizenship.  These are all variations of the Dream Act which failed in Congress in George Bush’s last year in office … but which Obama has partially implemented by fiat last summer (see: The Atlantic Story).  It is assumed that Democrats are pushing this meme so that they might get an additional nine million or so votes in upcoming elections (70% of what would be 12 million or so new voters). Republicans are … well … I can’t really figure out why Republicans are pushing this agenda.  The reason I say this is based upon two fallacious assumptions that I believe underlie the Republicans’ thinking.  These flawed assumptions are:

1)       Illegal immigrants will come forward to take advantage of this path to citizenship of whatever form it takes.  Think about it … why would you as an illegal immigrant … living in the shadows and getting many if not most of the benefits of citizenship, come forward and get your name entered in a database that would possibly take away some of these benefits and/or get the Internal Revenue Service on your trail to pay taxes and/or fines (see: The Daily Beast Story)? By staying in the shadows, it is also reasonable to assume that any onerous aspects of being “illegal” will be ameliorated by President Obama and future Democrat administrations … witness the above-mentioned executive order last summer.  Thus, the status quo has a very attractive appeal to this class on non-citizen. With a Dream Act, they might even be required to learn English for heavens sake!

2)       Illegal immigrants, as an indication of gratitude for their efforts, might vote in greater percentages for Republicans than such Hispanics and other immigrant groups now do. Why?  Survey after survey has shown that the reason such immigrants vote for Democrats is that they are for big-brother government and all the largess that such form of government returns to them (see: Huffington Post Opinion).  Besides, in many states (such as Nevada), many of these illegal immigrants vote Democrat already … goaded on by their conspiratorial unions (see: FrontPage Story).

I do believe that, with these Dream-Act look-a-likes,  the Republicans are attempting to carry water in a sieve.