“No matter how the law is written, as long as anyone is eligible for amnesty, everybody’s getting amnesty.” —Ann Coulter

The 2016 election was about many things, but first and foremost among them was the choice about whether America would advance a globalist agenda or a nationalist one. Nothing says globalist more than the effort to legalize the subset of illegal aliens known as Dreamers.

The term itself is classic propaganda used to create an unwarranted aura of entitlement, while shifting blame away from the Ruling Class who enabled a de facto invasion, and the illegal alien parents who engaged in it, onto the backs of ordinary Americans. Americans who will be labeled racist or xenophobic if they are “heartless” enough to deny children living in “the only country they’ve ever known through no fault of their own” a place at the American table. Even the term “children” is duplicitous. One can be as old as 36 and still qualify as a Dreamer.

Nevertheless, Americans are a compassionate people, and a substantial majority believe Dreamers should not only be allowed to stay in the United States, but allowed to become citizens if they meet certain requirements.

What if they don’t meet those requirements? In describing what took place between the original request and the final outcome of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, Coulter reveals the machinations of a Ruling Class more than willing to take advantage of that compassion. She explains the original request was for temporary guest worker permits, a.k.a. “agricultural amnesty,” that were “supposed to apply to — at most — 350,000 illegal aliens,” and be available “only to illegals who were currently in the country doing the back-breaking farm work that no American would do.”

Yet instead of granting guest worker permits, then-Rep. Chuck Schumer decided to grant full amnesty to any illegals who had done farm work for at least 90 days in the previous year. As a result, 350,000 guest workers became 1.5 million illegals granted full amnesty.

There’s another lesson to be gleaned from this episode, with regard to the aforementioned compassion, as long as certain requirements are met. Coulter further notes that following the passage of the 1986 law, 888,637 legalization applications were deemed fraudulent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Nonetheless, more than 800,000 of them were approved. Coulter rightly attributes this debacle to a combination of lawyers and activist groups working outside of government, combined with legions of sympathetic bureaucrats working inside the government, all determined to tip the scales in favor of getting as many illegals legalized as possible. Even more revealing is the fact that the federal courts were still being “tied up with dozens of class-action lawsuits brought on behalf of illegal aliens” two decades after the bill was passed.

Does anyone think America has gotten less litigious over the last 31 years?

Thus, what compassionate Americans really need to understand is that Dreamers are the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. And as soon as any deal regarding Dreamers is reached, the roar of “how can we break up families” will be deafening. After that, one might expect hack judges with an agenda to “discover” that breaking up Dreamer families is also illegal. Judges might even rule that “family reunification” and “chain migration” are essentially interchangeable terms.

Sen. Tom Cotton wrote the RAISE Act immigration reform bill to limit this chain migration, and he warns that without such reform DACA “could be the largest amnesty in the history of the United States.”

For those who think such nonsense can’t happen, it should be noted that U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, a Reagan appointee, ruled last week that Justice Department public safety grants cannot be withheld from sanctuary cities that defy federal immigration law. That those grants are supposed to be discretionary, with Justice in full control of deciding who gets them?

The fact that Americans are routinely told by the Ruling Class and their media enablers that 11 million illegals currently reside in the United States is a great indication that the Rule of Law will be ignored when it suits the globalist agenda.

Moreover, outright lying is part of the equation. In December 2003, the DHS estimated between eight million and 12 million illegal aliens resided here, and that 700,000 more enter annually and stay. And though America (amazingly) does not keep track of how many foreigners overstay their visas, if just 1% of the 30 million admitted on temporary visas do not leave as they are required to, that adds another 300,000 illegals to the annual influx.

Take the low end of the DHS estimate, and cut the annual total of border-breachers and visa-violators in half, and one gets a minimum of 15 million illegals living here. Take the high end of both totals and that number skyrockets to 26 million — as in just under 8% of the nation’s entire population.

Are Americans “compassionate” enough to legalize them all, again under certain conditions? It is worth remembering the 1986 law was all about deal-making. Americans were promised it was about granting amnesty — for the last time — in exchange for a secure border, and crack downs on businesses that hire illegals.

What we got instead? Amnesty, two broken promises and an exponentially greater number of self-described “undocumented and unafraid” illegals suing to get DACA reinstated, demanding amnesty, and berating a surprised Nancy Pelosi for not accommodating that demand quickly enough.

Regardless, even some conservatives believe they can obtain tradeoffs in exchange for legalization. Rush Limbaugh believes leftists would swap it for a border wall. Others think they could get a stricter interpretation of the 14th Amendment, eliminating constitutionally dubious birthright citizenship. Still others cling to the ever-amorphous “border security” tradeoff, apparently oblivious to the bait-and-switch epitomized by the passage of Secure Fence Act of 2006.

By the time Congress got finished “amending” it, Americans got a fraction of a fence and no border security.

PJ Media’s Roger Simon is even more naïve, insisting he would grant Dreamers “anything citizenship entails, for them to work and study here as long as they wish, except for that most precious of all things in a democratic republic — the vote.”

Apparently Simon is unaware that 10 towns and cities in Maryland’s Prince George and Montgomery Counties already allow illegal aliens to vote in local elections, and beginning in 2018, San Francisco will allow “non-citizens” to cast ballots in local school board elections. This despite the searing irony of knowing many of those who champion granting illegals a citizen’s greatest privilege are the same people who were apoplectic about the “foreign influence” supposedly tipping the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

By all means, let’s have a debate about Dreamers — a fully informed one that includes the documented duplicity and the machinations of both parties that have made a complete mockery of both the 1986 law and those who emigrate here legally. A mockery that has fueled the subsequent avalanche of illegals who have come here expecting that “as long as anyone is eligible for amnesty, everybody’s getting amnesty.”

The Ruling Class has expectations as well, and one suspects genuine compromise isn’t part of the agenda. And while they champion the concerns of illegals, their conspicuous lack of compassion for millions of Americans whose wages have been flat for decades is telling.

They would be wise to remember Americans have dreams too.