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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tonyexpress" data-source="post: 3307610" data-attributes="member: 1940"><a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hanson-dreamer-agenda-20180114-story.html" target="_blank">What the 'Dreamer' fight is really about</a>Democrats are so focused on the 800,000 Dreamers — less than 10% of the undocumented population — because they’re politically photogenic and for now seen as the easiest group to exempt from efforts to control illegal immigration. In blanket fashion, the media consistently report that they are model youth, fulfilling their proverbial “dreams” of finishing college and achieving upward mobility.That narrative lacks subtlety, if it’s not outright deceptive. The average age of DACA participants is now 24. Few after entering adulthood sought to address their known illegal status. Surveys suggest that most are not in school; fewer than 5% have graduated from college. Those employed earn a median hourly wage of $15.34, which means they are forced to compete on the lower end of the wage ladder. Only about a tenth of 1% of DACA youth serve in the U.S. military — fewer than 900 total.Setting aside the reality of the Dreamer pool, the Democrats’ method of fighting for DACA suggests that they are broadly in favor of letting immigration dysfunction continue apace. Why else would they refuse to give President Trump any significant concessions in the DACA negotiations — no wall, no end to chain migration, no cessation of visa lotteries?They know that if this generation of Dreamers gets a pass without broader reform, it will be followed by another and another, all expecting the same eventual exemptions.Many pre-Trump Republicans favored illegal immigration too, although for different reasons: They worried more about obtaining workers rather than future constituents and voters. The Chamber of Commerce/Wall Street wing of the GOP thus ignored the issue for the last half-century.</blockquote>

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