Illegal immigrants deserve the same respect and urgent support as Americans soldiers fighting on the battlefield, according to a group of 13 Democratic-affiliated national security officials who are urging Congress to extend the military’s promise of “leave no-one behind” to the several million illegal aliens who are now demanding an unconditional amnesty.

The claim came at the tail-end of a Nov. 14 letter in which the 13 Democratic-affiliated officials asked the top four congressional leaders to pass the ‘Dream Act’ amnesty. The amnesty urged by the five cabinet secretaries, four intelligence chiefs, the former service secretaries and one former admiral would entitle 3.6 million illegal immigrants — including 690,000 DACA beneficiaries — full access to federal aid programs, a fast-track to the voting booth, and the right to bring in millions of their homeland chain-migration relatives, regardless of their job skills, health, age or ideology, or job-market impact on Americans. The letter says:

With every day that passes, these Dreamers are getting closer to the reality of deportation. We urge you to pass the Dream Act of 2017 as quickly as possible to provide permanent protection for Dreamers and relieve this deserving group of the uncertainty created by the President’s decision to rescind DACA. We should leave no man or women behind. Let that be our guiding principle.

The 13 Democrats who signed the letter are hijacking the moral authority of American soldiers to pitch an unpopular amnesty, said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

“It is an insult to the people who have gone out there and earned their moral authority by doing something for the country” as soldiers, Mehlman said, adding “those people earned it by self-sacrifice and the illegal-aliens want amnesty for their self-interest… that does not entitle them to amnesty.”

The “Leave No One Behind” phrase is part of the military’s culture, and it signifies a moral duty to not abandon a fellow soldier in the heat of combat.

For example, Iraq veteran Nate Rawlings wrote in Time:

In the U.S. Armed Forces, we don’t leave anyone behind. It’s one of the basic pillars of what the Army calls the Warrior Ethos: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” … To this day, more than 73,000 troops remain missing from World War II alone. Unlike Maupin, most of them will never be found. But the search, though it may be in vain, will never end. The oath to never leave a fallen comrade is a promise made to each other, that even if we die, our brothers in arms will do everything they can to bring us home. It’s a mission that hasn’t ended, and as long as wars continue, it never will.

A September 2017 Defense Department article titled “Sacred Mission for DoD POW/MIA Agency: Leave No One Behind” quoted Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Since our founding it has been our military’s sacred pledge to never leave anyone behind … From the jungles of South Asia to the fields of France and beyond, men and women of the Department of Defense have dedicated their lives to tracking down every lead, leaving no stone unturned, to return or loved ones home where they belong.

Paul Springer, an associate professor of comparative military studies at the Air Command and Staff College, told Mashable in 2014 that:

This has been a part of American society before there was an American society … [In wars against Indians] There was a certain mentality of ‘No man left behind’ … [Currently] It’s kind of a contract with the service. You promise to serve us, we promise not to leave you.

The promise has crossed into art and civilian culture via such movies as “Black Hawk Down,: about the battle to rescue a captured soldier in Somalia.

In the last decade, Democrats and amnesty-advocates in the media have elevated their praise for illegal immigrants to extreme levels, as the party decided that immigrant voters would give it a national lock on power.

The praise took off with the widespread description of illegals as “dreamers,” as if no Americans have dreams that progressives need respect. In 2013, for example, House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi told a crowd of illegals gathered on the National Mall:

We must remember the blood of immigrants flows through all of our veins, and all of the immigrants who come to America, whether it was a month ago or three hundred years ago, all of them bring their hopes, their determination, their optimism for the future, their commitment to family, faith and community. In coming here with those American traits, all of the immigrants make America more American. Thank you for making America more American.

Since the election of a president who pledged to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, Senate and House Democrats gradually turned up the volume. In October 2017, Pelosi told one illegal that he is more invigorating that Americans’ children:

Our dreamers, they make America dream again. They’re so lovely and we, frankly, owe a debt to your parents for bringing you here to be such a brilliant part of our future. A constant reinvigoration of America, that’s what newcomers are.

Business leaders push the same illegals-are-better-than-Americans message despite the alarmingly low skill level among migrants. In November, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce posted billboards outside its building, facing the White House, declaring “Amerian: Built By Dreamers.” The billboards only include apparent foreigners and exclude native-born Americans.

In September, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, turned the volume up to 11, saying insisted the DACA amnesty is “the biggest issue of our time,” that Americans are inhuman for not supporting a no-strings amnesty, that DACA illegals are better Americans than Americans, and each illegal is as useful to the economy as billionaire Mike Bloomberg:

This is the biggest issue of our time because this goes to the values of being American. This is ‘Are we human’? ‘Are we acting in a track of morality?’ right? These people … At Apple we have many … they love America deeply. When you talk to them, I wish everyone in America loved American this much. They have jobs, they pay taxes, they are pillars of their community, They’re incredible people, and so, to me, it would be like someone coming to Mike [Bloomberg] and saying ‘Mike, I just found out you aren’t really a citizen here, you need to leave.’ This is unacceptable. This is not who we are as a country, and so I am personally shocked that there is even a discussion of this.

Watch Cook’s performance here.

This extravagant praise for lower-skilled migrants is “essentially saying “They’re better than you are because they are the future,’” said Mehlman. Both Democrats and business leaders are declaring that illegals “have better family value, better work ethic, better everything, and the American people don’t have the same qualities.”

But GOP-affiliated leaders in D.C. also elevate the status of the illegals, often by carelessly describing America as a “nation of immigrants,” even though it is obviously a nation of Americans. This month, for example, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security said Americans “owe” an amnesty to the illegals who were brought in the United States by their illegal-immigrant parents. “I believe that we must and we owe it to them to find a permanent solution,” Kristjen Nielsen told the Senate panel. She worked for President George W. Bush.

The establishment’s relentless favoritism for illegals over Americans helps explain why Americans oppose cheap-labor amnesties that are intended to sideline their futures and their children’s futures.

In 2014, voters blocked the Democratic-backed “Gang of Eight” cheap-labor and amnesty bill and then flipped nine Democratic Senate seats to the GOP. In 2016, the voters showed their anger over immigration by awarding the presidency to a pro-American real-estate developer whose slogan was “Make America Great Again.”

Many legislators do not understand the public’s two-track attitudes about immigration, in part, because their usual pollsters are also being paid by their other clients in business to tout amnesty. These industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls are skewed to show that Americans want to welcome migrants. But other “fairness” polls show that voters also put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

The politicians’ and lobbyists’ praise for illegals is seemingly contradicted by crude commercial facts. For example, a November report by the pro-immigration Migration Policy Institute shows that the DACA illegals have a college graduation rate that is one-fourth that of similar-aged Americans. The broader group of 3.6 million ‘dreamer’ illegals has a college graduation rate that is one-tenth of the same-age American graduation rate. The vast majority of DACA beneficiaries and “dreamers” work in jobs alongside blue-collar Americans, including whites, African Americans, and legal-immigrant Latinos.

However, the migrants’ lack of skills is not a problem for amnesty advocates.

If the illegals are amnestied, business will receive a supply of new payroll-cutting workers, plus a huge federal subsidy in the form of federal aid to the unskilled immigrant workers. For example, the cost of Obamacare for the ‘dreamers’ would total roughly $115 billion over a decade, much of which would go to medical companies.

Some of the letter signers stand to benefit from the economic transfers required by an amnesty. For example, Admiral James Stavridis is the current dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and his industry would receive a government funding boost to educate some of the migrants. Another signer is former Gen. Michael Hayden, who is now a “principal” at the Chertoff Group, which is an insider-advocacy group in Washington D.C. It was formed by Mike Chertoff, who ran DHS for President George W. Bush. During his tenure, Chertoff tried twice to create an “any willing worker” economy, so helping drive Bush’s poll ratings below 30 percent.

Neither Stavridis nor Hayden responded to questions from Breitbart News.

Other members of the group are part of the Democratic coalition and could gain if an amnesty helps their faction regain power in the White House.

The letter from the 13 Democrats does not refer to the preferences and dreams of 280 million Americans who have been pushed into a high-immigration, low-wage economy by federal policy.

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.

But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting 1 million new legal immigrants, by providing almost 2 million work-permits to foreigners, by providing work-visas to roughly 500,000 temporary workers and doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor and spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

The cheap-labor policy has also reduced investment and job creation in many interior states because the coastal cities have a surplus of imported labor. For example, almost 27 percent of zip codes in Missouri had fewer jobs or businesses in 2015 than in 2000, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group. In Kansas, almost 29 percent of zip codes had fewer jobs and businesses in 2015 compared to 2000, which was a two-decade period of massive cheap-labor immigration.