You Won’t Believe What Illegal Aliens on Campus Want Now

With California politicians like Gov. Jerry Brown, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi endlessly cheerleading on behalf of illegal immigrants and “sanctuary” cities, it’s not all that surprising DACA students are growing more and more emboldened, too.

Many are now making outrageous demands on college campuses — despite their illegal status, euphemistically referred to as undocumented.

Some 200 students from University of California, Santa Barbara walked out of class earlier this week to demand increased resources for illegal immigrant students — an act that is becoming cliché among DACA students and their supporters. Among their demands: access to an attorney to defend against potential ICE raids and a center on campus marked as a “safe space,” where undocumented students could convene, as Campus Reform noted.

The event coincided with President Donald Trump’s initial deadline of March 5, 2018, for phasing out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The undocumented student group IDEAS, which stands for Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success, promoted the walkout on Facebook. Most people would agree their demands and sense of entitlement are staggering:

“We URGE all of UCSB’s students, staff, faculty, and the #SantaBarbara community to take immediate action and join us in our walkout. Do not be idle on this day, there is power in our joint collective,” read a portion from a lengthy Facebook post by the IDEAS group. “Congress has failed to vote on a single piece of legislation to protect the 800,000 DACA recipients and 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.”

The group also said, “UCSB has failed to fulfill IDEAS’ demands for over three years. Nevertheless, we have been surviving and thriving every day in face of this inaction. We no longer accept being ignored … March with us as we demand immigration reform for the over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in this country and for the UCSB administration to meet the needs of undocumented students.”

And while the state of California — or at least its vote-hungry politicians — may be overly sympathetic to the demands of DACA students, not everyone is as eager to cower to their every whim.

“DACA recipients are clearly overplaying their hand if they think that they are in a position of demanding anything from Congress or the American people. We owe them nothing,” said David Ray, director of communications at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “It’s their parents, not the American public, who put them in this position, and maybe they should be taking their rage out on the parents, who knowingly and willingly plunged them into this situation in the first place.”

IDEAS was established in 2006 by undocumented students who felt unrepresented on the campus of UCSB, according to the group’s website.

“It’s part of the groupthink on the Left. First, wrap yourself in the blanket of victimhood, and then start listing your demands,” Ray noted of the group’s overwrought sense of entitlement. “They’ve seen it work for other special-interest groups, and now they’re trying the same tactic. The only difference is that unlike everyone else, they can be deported at will. Perhaps they need to be reminded of that fact,” he added.

“It’s part of the groupthink on the Left. First, wrap yourself in the blanket of victimhood, and then start listing your demands.”

As far as what comes next, now that the deadline for DACA has passed, Ray offered this: “President Trump laid out his solution for DACA — an overly generous amnesty for 1.8 million DACA recipients and others who never even bothered to file for protected status, along with a handful of common-sense enforcement measures that he was elected on, and his offer was rebuffed by Democratic leaders in the Senate.”

He added, “The president’s offer was not an opening, but his final offer. The fate of DACA is in the hands of the Democrats, who, by their recent actions, seem to want to drag this into the 2018 midterm elections.”

Ray offered solutions for DACA students — where others have failed.

“The possibility of something as hugely controversial as a DACA amnesty getting enough votes to pass Congress without some strong enforcement measures attached is nil. Their demands for a ‘clean DACA bill’ demonstrates an enormous amount of political naiveté. Perhaps, instead of walking out of class in protest, these students should — instead — be spending more time studying American civics.”

But that would require college campuses to resume teaching — not merely to push the divisive identity politics.

Elizabeth Economou is a former CNBC staff writer and adjunct professor. Follow her on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage image: UC, Santa Barbara Library, CC BY-SA 2.0, by UCSB Library; photo credit, article image: Protest Against Announced Repeal of DACA, CC BY 2.0, by Harrie van Veen)