Someone Has Been Eating The Linens

A couple years ago Newt Gingrich started up a site called The Americano for the purpose of offering smart information on all the important aspects of Hispanic life.

The Americano is a bilingual site that offers a different take on news and opinion. It looks to offer a more balanced view on all the issues that concern American Hispanics today, while celebrating the richness of Hispanic Heritage.

I wouldn't put it past Gingrich to think El American would celebrate the richness of Hispanic Heritage just as much as The Americano.

An article that caught my eye today is entitled The Nightmare that is the Dream Act by Luis F. Rodriguez. Essentially his argument against the DREAM Act is that it would result in our country being awash with illegal immigrants. He cherry picks sections of the Act and presents them out of context. For example:

* In General - Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1623) is repealed.

Rodriguez's comment: The federal law mentioned above prohibits illegal aliens from getting instate tuition. I would like to take the time to point out the irony that any state that allows illegal immigrants to get instate tuition is violating federal law, this would be the perfect example of Preemption, unfortunately the federal government won’t stop this practice.

From the first paragraph of the Act (20 page PDF):

To amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to permit States to determine State residency for higher education purposes and to authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.

It makes sense that if you have a federal law prohibiting something then you must repeal it to allow it. Next he picks on SEC. 4. CANCELLATION OF REMOVAL AND ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS OF CERTAIN LONG-TERM RESIDENTS WHO ENTERED THE UNITED STATES AS CHILDREN, again pointing out bits out of context and comes to this conclusion:

This act would allow anyone who is 5 years plus one day who was brought into this country as a newborn to be eligible. Later in the act it stipulates that the “alien” can be not older than 35 years old to apply. Has anyone thought about how many people we are talking about? And once all these people are rewarded with citizenship they can proceed to legalize all of their relatives.

Rodriguez either can't read and understand English very well or is being intentionally deceptive. Taken as a whole, Section 4 does nothing of the sort. Next he takes one sentence from Section 4.

(B) the alien has been a person of good moral character since the time of application;

And he concludes: This essentially forgives anything the alien has done up to the point of application. So, technically an alien could apply and there would be no consideration of any previous criminality, this might also include DUI, and any other previous arrests and/or convictions.

Actually, that is one of a list of requirements--check out (A) through (F)--that the alien must meet. Previous criminality is definitely considered.

And so on. Rather than correct each of Luis Rodriguez's inaccuracies, let me just say I think he is full of sheet.