Tom Cotton: DREAM Act Would Offer Amnesty to Illegal Aliens with Criminal Convictions

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Breitbart News on Thursday that Democrats’ DREAM Act legislation, if enacted into federal law, would permit the extension of amnesty to illegal aliens with criminal convictions.

“[The DREAM Act] would ignore criminal records,” Cotton explained in an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. “It would exclude multiple criminal convictions at the state and federal levels, [including] serious and violent felonies that have been pleaded down to lower offenses. It would give Alejandro Mayorka — who we’ve seen is surrounded by serious ethical questions — the ability to issue waivers, even for people like human traffickers.”

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Cotton reflected on his analysis of the DREAM Act, introduced on Thursday by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He noted how the Democrat Party and broader left frame the DREAM Act and similar amnesty proposals as a humanitarian measure for children.

“The Dream Act [is] often portrayed by people like Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Dick Durbin as helping the Tiny Tim Cratchits of the world, the poor chimney sweep out there who’s seven years old and just trying to get a loaf of bread to survive on,” Cotton stated.

“Most of the people that the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program benefited when Obama instituted it were already in their 20s. Now many of these people are in their 20s or even their 30s,” Cotton said. “About seven out of eight, in fact, are in their 20s. So these people are in the situation where they arrived here as minors, and therefore are illegal immigrants, but we’re mostly talking about adults. We’re not talking about little children.”

“The DREAM Act goes far beyond that program,” Cotton said of former Barack Obama’s executive order. He continued:

It would have amnesty for more than two million such people, and then here’s the kicker. The main selling point that the Democrats and, unfortunately, some Republicans use for this proposal is that children shouldn’t pay for the sins of the parents. Okay, I understand that. Now, I would say maybe they shouldn’t benefit from the sins of the parents, either, but how about parents paying for the sins of the parents, right?

Cotton highlighted the DREAM Act’s facilitation of chain migration.

“The whole point is that the children were brought here, they had no choice, they were minors they know no other country, and the parents are the ones that made the choice,” Cotton remarked. “Dick Durbin’s DREAM Act would allow those children — who are now adults — once they get legal status, to then turn around and get amnesty and citizenship for their parents who violated our laws in the first place and created this situation.”

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