Angela Mills does not support the introduction of the DREAM Act. Angela argues that the provisions of the DREAM Act have been designed to operate as a political tool to appeal to immigrant voters. She feels such a law would encourage more people to try to enter the country illegally.
She objects to the fact that people who have no legal right to be in the country are already being educated in school at the state taxpayers' expense and feels it will be even more unfair if they get assistance to get a college education as well.
For her, this reflects what is wrong with the American response to the high numbers of illegal immigrants who, she thinks, are ‘flooding into the country' every day over the southern border. Instead of enforcing the existing laws, which allow the federal authorities to remove those persons caught coming over the border, they are released and told to appear at a court hearing.
Angela argues they then disappear into the low paid economy for a few years then surface to claim they are now fully fledged Americans who deserve all the rights of those, like her, whose families have been in the country for six generations and who helped build the nation from the bottom up.
Angela is angered by the way those who support the DREAM Act seem completely persuaded of the benefits of America becoming more of a multicultural society. She is concerned that the popular image of the USA as a ‘melting pot' of races and cultures is based too much on helping people from poor countries, who will always depend on welfare payments and never really contribute to the wealth of America.
Her parents had saved all their lives to send her to university in New York and they'd paid out-of-state fees. They had not qualified for any assistance from public educational funds. The idea that she, and others like her, should be asked to pay more tax to enable the children of illegal immigrants to study in her state angers her. The possibility that these youngsters might then take a job her son might have wanted adds insult to injury.
She thinks the bill is really all about political parties trying to secure the votes of legal immigrants who are sympathetic to immigrants who have no current route to legal residency. She has heard the bill described as a ‘crass political calculation' which will not restrict immigration, as is claimed, but does offer amnesty to those who have broken the law by entering the country illegally. Angela agrees with this assessment.
