DREAM: Amnesty through the back door

Larwyn sent a link to an article at the Heritage Foundation: A Sleeper Amnesty: Time to Wake Up from the DREAM Act

Just three months after the Senate immigration bill met its well-deserved end, amnesty advocates in the U.S. Congress resumed their efforts. Recently, Senator Richard Durbin (D–IL) announced on the Senate floor his intention to offer the Development, Relief, and Edu­cation for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act as an amend­ment to the defense authorization bill.

The DREAM Act (S. 774) is a nightmare. It is a mas­sive amnesty that extends to the millions of illegal aliens who entered the United States before the age of 16. The illegal alien who applies for this amnesty is immediately rewarded with "conditional" lawful per­manent resident (green card) status, which can be converted to a non-conditional green card in short order. The alien can then use his newly acquired status to seek green cards for the parents who brought him in illegally in the first place. In this way, it is also a back­door amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens who brought their children with them to the United States.

This means that you wouldn't even have to be born in the USA in order to become an "anchor baby."

Then there's the matter of in-state tuition rates at public universities:

What is less well known about the DREAM Act is that it also allows illegal aliens to receive in-state tuition rates at public universities, discriminating against U.S. citizens from out of state and law-abiding foreign students. It repeals a 1996 federal law that pro­hibits any state from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens.

But it doesn't end there,

The DREAM Act also makes the illegal aliens eli­gible for federal student loans and federal work-study programs—another benefit that law-abiding foreign students cannot receive—all at taxpayer expense. A consistent theme emerges: Illegal aliens are treated much more favorably than aliens who fol­low the law. There is no penalty for illegal behavior.

My friend, a naturalized American citizen originally from South America (who was driven out of New Jersey because of high taxes which pay for NJ colleges) who lives in Pennsylvania but works in New Jersey and whose daughter (also a naturalized citizen) goes to college in NJ, is incensed about this:
Here she is, having gone (along with her family) through the lengthy citizenship process,
having paid NJ real estate taxes for decades,
still paying NJ income taxes,
and paying out-of-state tuition at a NJ university,
and now illegal aliens would be getting in-state tuition.

As a law-abiding American citizen, I'm angry, too.