Is the "Kids Act" Really Just for Kids? Probably Not

Jon Feere is the Legal Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.

 
For months, some Republicans in the House of Representatives have been promising to introduce immigration legislation that would legalize a significant portion of illegal aliens living in the United States. Though no text has been released, one of the more high-profile GOP proposals is known as the Kids Act, an amnesty that would provide legal status to an as yet unknown number of presumably younger illegal aliens.
 
Many questions about how the Kids Act might operate remain unanswered. But if the amnesty is similar to the often-introduced but always-rejected Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, it may contain a number of problematic provisions that raise the following questions:
 
1. Will the Kids Act Amnesty Only Benefit Minors?Advocates of the DREAM Act and the Kids Act sell their amnesty by focusing entirely on sympathetic young children. But even though the "M" in the acronymous DREAM Act stands for "Minors", the amnesty has never been limited to people 17 years of age or younger and most beneficiaries would, in fact, be adults. While some versions of the DREAM Act restricted recipients to illegal aliens under age 35, the most recent version had no upper age limit. But advocates know that infants and toddlers make for better marketing and so children are exploited in the push to legalize millions of adult illegal aliens who are legally and morally culpable of various immigration-related crimes.
 
The age of initial entry is also an issue. While an infant has certainly not begun to identify with a nationality, teenagers certainly identify with their homelands and have embraced their languages and cultures, not least through attending school there for many years. In other words, their identities have already been formed. To suggest that such individuals "know no other home than the United States", as amnesty advocates do, is simply not accurate for those who enter illegally at an older age.
 
It is possible that the Kids Act will only benefit minors, but if it involves dishonest marketing it will make the amnesty a tough sell. Thus far, the proposal sounds like it is being designed to convert President Obama's lawless Deferred Action decree — which legalizes illegal aliens as old as 30 — into actual law. Instead of going after Obama for making an end run around Congress and the Constitution, the GOP is apparently following his lead, thereby encouraging similar lawlessness in the future.