Steve King Is Right About the KIDS Act

Steve King has provoked the wrath of both the Democratic and Republican establishments over his statements about a proposed GOP bill that hasn’t even been formally introduced yet, the “KIDS Act.” {snip}

Like the DREAM Act, which Congress voted down on many occasions, the KIDS Act purports to help only the most sympathetic illegal immigrants, those whose parents brought them here as children. What critics do not want discussed is that such bills also grant amnesty to millions of others not so easily characterized as model citizens-in-waiting.

Proponents of these bills always trot out a few young illegal aliens who came to America as infants and later became high school valedictorians. That is supposed to suggest that most of, if not all, of the millions of illegal aliens who would be awarded the amnesty are just like those most sympathetic cases.

Representative King poked a hole in that pretty pink balloon, and for that, he is being attacked.

King stated that while “some of them are valedictorians — and their parents brought them in. It wasn’t their fault. It’s true in some cases, but they aren’t all valedictorians. They weren’t all brought in by their parents. For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the same act.”

As expected, the perpetually offended Democrats immediately expressed their outrage over King’s remarks. Obama’s press secretary called them “extremely unfortunate”, and, always eager to help Republicans win more votes, noted “They certainly don’t help any efforts by Republicans to improve their standing among Hispanic Americans.”

The GOP House Leadership, which is pushing this misguided bill, also attacked King. Eric Cantor said the comments were “inexcusable” and John Boehner said he used “hateful language.”

U.S. News and World Report characterized King as saying that “most immigrants were drug smugglers,” which is not the case. King was referring solely to young illegal aliens not all “immigrants.” Nor did King suggest most illegal aliens are drug smugglers. King said that far more entered the country as drug smugglers than ever became valedictorians, which is demonstrably true.

{snip}

It has been common knowledge for a decade that both people smuggling and drug smuggling are controlled by the same Mexican drug cartels. The cartels’ use of thousands of teenagers and young adults to carry loads of marijuana across the border is well known and well documented. Illegals seeking to cross the southwest border are routinely required to carry drugs across the border as a partial payment of the $1,500 price for the crossing.

Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle has pointed to an article by Lourdes Medrano entitled, “Along key stretch of US-Mexico border, more kids running drugs,” published just last week in the Christian Science Monitor. Medrano reports that “In 2012, 244 minors faced drug-smuggling charges in the Tucson sector.”

{snip}

The fact that there were nearly 400 minors arrested in just one of the eight border sectors in the last 18 months — to say nothing of the young smugglers who have avoided detection — suggests that King’s ratio of smugglers to valedictorians may be in the right ballpark.

{snip} What he suggested is that a law written so broadly that it gives benefits to two to four million illegal aliens merely because they entered the country as teenagers will inevitably give those benefits to hundreds of of thousands of individuals who first entered our country as drug smugglers.

{snip}