The illegal aliens who disrupted Monday’s press conference by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in San Francisco destroyed whatever sympathy the so-called “Dreamers” might have been entitled to until now.
The American public has been told that the 800,000 or so beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are simply bright, hard-working, would-be Americans, suffering “through no fault of their own.”
And yet the crowd of several dozen activists who shut down Pelosi’s presser violated the most basic principles of American political discourse. They stopped Pelosi — or anyone else — from speaking, and then chanted “Let us speak!” without a hint of shame.
They shouted “Brown Power!”, not concerned in the slightest that an explicitly racist slogan might be inappropriate. (Imagine the media frenzy if an anti-DACA protest chanted “White Power.”)
“All of us, or none of us!” they repeated. In their banners and signs, they made their intentions clear: “Fight 4 All 11 Million.”
In other words, they are not going to be content with offering DACA beneficiaries legal status in the U.S. They want amnesty for all of the illegal aliens in the country — including those who knowingly crossed the border illegally. (Presumably, “all of us” also includes criminals, whose deportation the activists, no doubt, oppose.)
It might be unfair to suggest the activists who crashed Pelosi’s presser represent all DACA beneficiaries. For all we know, many of them may not even have been DACA recipients, or even illegal aliens. Some could well have been professional community organizers.
But in the days that have passed since then, there has been no effort to reject the protesters’ tactics or their message. No DACA supporters or spokespeople have denounced or disavowed them.
Pelosi seemed genuinely surprised, and hurt, by the protest. After all, these were the tactics that the “Resistance” was meant to use against Donald Trump, and against Republicans — not against Democratic leaders trying to help.
But the activists — who called themselves the “Immigration Liberation Movement” at one point — are not interested in rewarding Pelosi for her efforts on their behalf. Nor are they interested at all in conventional American politics.
No — the “Dreamers” of DACA are more interested in “fundamentally transforming America,” as Barack Obama once said, than they are in joining it as ordinary citizens. They are not really trying to convince the rest of us that they love this country, and deserve to be here.
Rather, they are trying to show each other that when they win — and they have no doubt that they will — it will be through militant tactics and the prideful rhetoric of identity politics.
That is not a victory that the United States can afford. We cannot allow thugs — for that is what these “Dreamers” have become — to dictate policy. We cannot allow people who are in the country illegally to defy the country’s laws and its leaders — even those on the left — without fear of arrest or deportation. We cannot allow illegal aliens to treat their would-be countrymen with intolerance and disdain, as if they are entitled to what others have earned legally.
There is a case to be made for allowing some DACA beneficiaries, at least, to enjoy some kind of non-citizen, legal status — once the border wall has been built. But that is not the case the “Dreamers” are making.
They want total amnesty, and more. Though they claim to be American in every way other than birth, they are showing contempt for this country, its laws, and its traditions.
If it’s “all of us, or none of us,” then the choice is easy: None of you.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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