OP-ED: Granting DACA recipients amnesty would undermine the rule of law

If I were a citizen of Mexico, living in Guadalajara, and decided I wanted to emigrate to the United States, I would have to apply for the legal documents to enter the U.S. while I remained in Mexico. It would require a significant period of time and a thorough process before I could legally enter.

After entering America legally, I could apply for citizenship and wait the decade or so before it is my turn. I would not be given special treatment outside the regular, legal path.

If lawmakers wanted to provide a special pathway to citizenship, they would allow people who are in the country illegally to obtain legal status and begin the process to citizenship while they reside illegally in America. Lawmakers would not require them to return to their native country to apply. They would allow illegal aliens to move in front of everyone else who is waiting to enter the United States in a nonspecial way.

Lawmakers would make them special in every way. They would disregard the irony of giving illegal aliens special status because their parents committed an illegal act. Lawmakers would treat them so special, that their illegal status would be irrelevant to their pathway to citizenship – and, in fact, would even be unique among how all other illegal aliens are treated, ahead of several classes of legal aliens.

This special treatment is proposed in every major immigration bill pending in Congress. For the DACA population, who are now aged 21 through 37, the House proposes to give them legal status immediately, unlike the millions waiting in their home countries in the nonspecial way.

DACA is deferred legal action for a special segment of those who are illegally in the U.S. Approximately 800,000 people applied for deferred status, allowing them to stay in the country without risk of deportation, even though they are illegally here. The proposed legislation will allow up to 1.8 million illegal aliens to immediately convert their illegal status to legal status. That is the classic definition of amnesty.

Merely talking about DACA amnesty has produced the latest surge of illegal aliens. It also lays the foundation for the next two populations who will demand amnesty: the children of illegal aliens who were brought here between 2007 and 2018, and the parents of the DACA population, who originally brought their children in illegally.

Special application of laws for select groups undermines why America is so great. Why are we so exceptional? It has been because we have the rule of law. By granting DACA amnesty and setting aside our laws, we demonstrate that we no longer value the rule of law – and equality for all – and lay the foundation for further abrogation of our American heritage. America has become like the farm in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" where all of the animals were equal, but some were more equal than others.