DAVID FRUM's latest column for The Week is in part a reply to my recent post on the DREAM Act . I'm not impressed. Mr Frum is either ill-informed about the proposed law or is seeking to provoke opposition by spreading falsehoods about the policy.

Mr Frum presents several "nightmare" scenarios he says the DREAM Act would make possible. First, Mr Frum says an undocumented immigrant not covered by the provisions of the law could apply anyway using forged documents, which, even if detected, could impede the process of running the scofflaw out of the country.I can't make any sense of this. Here's what Mr Frum says:

Even if the fraud is detected and your application is refused, you simply revert to your previous status. In the process, however, you have gained a new legal advantage: DREAM forbids the Department of Homeland Security from using any information in a DREAM application in deportation proceedings.

Where's the "new legal advantage"? If you're in the country illegally and don't qualify for DREAM, how does DHS's inability to use bunk info in your DREAM application keep them from deporting you exactly as they would had you not filed some crooked papers? Is Mr Frum's problem with DREAM really that an undocumented immigrant can't get booted extra hard for the additional offense of lying about qualifying for legal status under DREAM?

Mr Frum's second allegedly nightmarish scenario goes as follows:

You're a 40-year-old illegal alien who entered the country as an adult. You have a third-grade education. You are barely literate even in Spanish. Your back is bothering you; you are not sure how long you can continue working. Quite frankly, no country on earth would regard you as a desirable immigrant. Don't despair. DREAM can offer you too an amnesty and gain you access to a lifetime of taxpayer-funded disability payments. You have kids don't you? If they apply successfully under DREAM, they can sponsor you.

This is exceedingly misleading. First, it's not quite right to think of DREAM, a narrowly tailored provision that offers a relatively small group of young people a path to citizenship only if they are able to clear a number or hurdles, as an "amnesty". Second, the process by which our notional 40-year-old undocumented immigrant can become a citizen is precisely the same as the process by which Mr Frum's Canadian father could become a citizen through Mr Frum's sponsorship. It's not amnesty, and Mr Frum is simply goading the nativist rabble by choosing to misuse language in this way. Moreover, Mr Frum effectively misrepresents his scenario by conveniently omitting the dispiritng timeline. Let's fix that.

So, you're Mr Frum's 40-year-old undocumented immigrant. DREAM, which requires you to be between 12 and 35 at the time of application, does nothing for you, even if you did come into the country as a child. But you have a daughter who does qualifies. Woohoo! You're in like Flynn, right? Well, no. Probably not.

Suppose DREAM becomes law in 2011. Your kid applies right away and earns status as a "conditional legal resident" (or "CLR"). Now, can you your kid sponsor you for legal permanent residency? No, she cannot. Only citizens can sponsor their parents. Suppose your kid goes to college and stays out of trouble. The earliest she can apply to become an "LPR" or "legal permanent resident" (ie, get a green card) is 5 1/2 years after approval for conditional permament residency. That's some time in 2016 at the earliest. Now, a green card-holder can apply for citizenship after five years. Under DREAM, as I understand it, once a CLR is approved for a green card, the time spent as a CLR counts toward citizenship. So someone approved for a green card under the auspices of DREAM ought to be able to apply for citizenship right away. Let's assume miracles from the bureaucracy and say all these applications are processed and approved at the speed of light. So, thanks to DREAM, your daughter will be a citizen no sooner than 2016, at which point she can finally sponsor you (as long as she's over the age of 21). But don't get excited yet! You entered the country illegally, and were working illegally before applying for a green card, and that means you aren't eligible for a green card. (See question 10 here.) So, sorry, DREAM can't help you.

Suppose you entered the United States legally on a visa and then left your minor daughter here once your visa expired, or something like that. In that case, she could sponsor you for permanent residency after qualifying for citizenship through DREAM. In this case, you could be an American as soon as 2021, assuming magical bureaucratic efficiency. Of course, among those young people able to work their way to citizenship through DREAM, how many will have parents who qualify for sponsorship? Not many.

Mr Frum ends by spreading a falsehood. He writes:

And best of all: DREAM stands as an ongoing invitation, forever and ever. DREAM's benefits extend not only to people who happen NOW to be illegally present inside the United States. DREAM's benefits will be extended to all those who may enter illegally in future.

This is flat-out wrong. Unfortunately, DREAM is a niggardly, one-time affair. According to the text of the bill, DREAM applies only if "the alien has been physically present in the United States for a continuous period of not less than 5 years immediately preceding the date of enactment of this Act..." That is to say, DREAM wouldn't apply to kids who came to America three years ago, much less to any kids who comes in the future. Mr Frum is sowing confusion when he says that

DREAM sends a message to every teenager on planet Earth: Come to America. If you enter the United States before age 16, and if you can remain here for five years (or can buy papers that purport to show you have lived here for five years), you're as good as a citizen already.

Were Mr Frum to read the bill, he would see that he has made a serious error. DREAM is a stopgap measure of exceedingly limited scope which would slightly mitigate the injustices wrought by America's reality-defying immigration and citizenship law. I look forward to his correction.

Meanwhile, I hope he'll consider our leader on DREAM in the current edition of the paper.

(Photo credit: AFP)