{"id":11015,"date":"2018-01-17T14:25:20","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T19:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/?p=11015"},"modified":"2018-01-17T14:25:20","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T19:25:20","slug":"hanson-what-the-dreamer-fight-is-really-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/17\/hanson-what-the-dreamer-fight-is-really-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanson: What the ‘Dreamer’ fight is really about"},"content":{"rendered":"

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L.A. Times<\/em><\/strong>
\nJanuary 14, 2018<\/p>\n

OP-ED<\/p>\n

What the ‘Dreamer’ fight is really about<\/strong><\/p>\n

The loud fight over what will happen to America\u2019s \u201cDreamers\u201d isn\u2019t what it seems. For both sides, it\u2019s a fig leaf used to mask their true intentions.<\/p>\n

In his first term, Barack Obama admitted that he had no constitutional authority (“I’m president, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Democrats are so focused on the 800,000 Dreamers \u2014 less than 10% of the undocumented population \u2014 because they\u2019re 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 \u201cdreams\u201d of finishing college and achieving upward mobility.<\/p>\n

An irate public has had it with open borders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That narrative lacks subtlety, if it\u2019s 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 \u2014 fewer than 900 total.<\/p>\n

Setting aside the reality of the Dreamer pool, the Democrats\u2019 method of fighting for DACA suggests that they are broadly in favor of letting immigration dysfunction continue apace. Why else would they refuse to give President Trump any significant concessions in the DACA negotiations \u2014 no wall, no end to chain migration, no cessation of visa lotteries?<\/p>\n

They know that if this generation of Dreamers gets a pass without broader reform, it will be followed by another and another, all expecting the same eventual exemptions.<\/p>\n

Democrats once used to talk about ending outright illegal immigration. They worried that it put downward pressure on wages. They thought it eroded union efforts and sapped political support among Democrats\u2019 blue-collar base, while overtaxing finite social services to the detriment of the American underclass… read the rest here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  L.A. Times January 14, 2018 OP-ED What the ‘Dreamer’ fight is really about The loud fight over what will happen to America\u2019s \u201cDreamers\u201d isn\u2019t what it seems. For both sides, it\u2019s a fig leaf used to mask their true intentions. In his first term, Barack Obama admitted that he had no constitutional authority (“I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11024,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015\/revisions\/11024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}