Reid’s priority is amnesty, not jobs

Anyone who thought Harry Reid would respond to his bruising re-election campaign and huge Democratic losses nationally by moving to the center, away from President Obama’s agenda and toward a new focus on economic growth, is about to be proved wrong.

The Senate majority leader from Nevada intends to use the lame-duck session that begins Monday to push for passage of the Dream Act, a form of amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act would create a path to citizenship for men and women who entered the country illegally before age 16 and have been here at least five years. Enrolling in college or enlisting in the U.S. military would give these foreign nationals conditional permanent residency. Completing just two years of studies toward a bachelor’s degree or two years of military service within six years of entering the program would qualify applicants for permanent residency and the ability to seek citizenship.

The bill is being pitched as a humanitarian gesture for teens who had no idea their parents snuck them into the country as youngsters, or had no choice but to follow their lawbreaking family members across the border.

In fact, the bill lets anyone younger than 36 seek amnesty by taking a few credit hours or joining the Army. No doubt, many of the illegal immigrants who’ll benefit from the Dream Act already have anchor babies of their own. The Dream Act is for grown-ups, not kids.

It won’t be tough for illegals who don’t qualify to claim they do. They’ll find a way to create documents that falsify their age and the number of years they’ve been here. And once they get their amnesty, they’ll use “family” preferences in existing immigration law to bring over the rest of their kin.

The Dream Act is presumably Sen. Reid’s way of rewarding the Hispanic voters he courted so heavily this year — and building a future Democratic voting bloc in the process. It creates another incentive for foreign nationals to drag their children into the United States. One act of amnesty inevitably leads to another, after all.

Did Sen. Reid make passage of the Dream Act the centerpiece of his re-election campaign? Of course not. He might have lost if he did. No, Sen. Reid told anyone who would listen that it was his job to create jobs, that he was fighting to put Nevadans back to work. The Dream Act does neither of these things. Rather, it only injects more competition into the labor pool, preventing unskilled Americans from gaining entry-level work and leaving them dependent on government aid to survive.

Focus on private-sector jobs, Sen. Reid — and quit dreaming.