Congress Displeases on DREAM

Politico: As the death rattle of the 111th Congress approaches its rheumy end, we admit that there are some actions our lawmakers have taken that do not displease us. (Why we are talking like Queen Victoria, we do not know.) We are happy that a tax deal that enriched everybody from the ultra-deserving middle class to the scoundrel rich also will continue benefits to the unemployed. We are pleased with the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” making it possible for gays and lesbians to openly risk their lives in our military adventures like everyone else. And it is also to be hoped that an arms reduction treaty with Russia will be ratified, as we think we already have a sufficiency of nuclear warheads to incinerate the globe and everything on it an ample number of times. Our displeasure was acute, however, with the failure of the Senate to pass the DREAM Act, which stands, we are assured, for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. To put it simply — and we prefer to put things simply so that members of Congress will understand us — if you were a small child smuggled in your mother’s arms across the border into the United States but now you have graduated from high school without seriously running afoul of the law and have attended two years of college, or if you wanted to serve your country in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, you could get on the pathway to citizenship under this act. (Some journalists, with whom we spend company as rarely as possible and think about even less, have written that the DREAM Act would bestow citizenship. It would not. It would give recipients a green card, making them resident aliens who could apply for citizenship in five years if they maintained high moral character, something somewhat difficult to do in this country if the shows we see on our television receiver are to be believed.)