The most successful propaganda campaign ever waged by progressives can be reduced to a single word: dreamers.

It is a propaganda campaign so successful that even conservative news entities use the word to describe a subset of illegal aliens brought here by their law-breaking parents. Illegal aliens whose expectations of amnesty have become demands, abetted by immigration activists and their Democrat allies, and enabled by an unconstitutional executive order by Barack Obama.

It is a term designed to elicit equal measures of compassion — and far more critically, guilt — from otherwise sensible Americans appalled by the wholesale lawbreaking represented by millions of illegals residing in America for decades. It is also designed to obscure the reality that Americans have already been compassionate, granting unambiguous amnesty to 2.7 million illegals, courtesy of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The same act that was supposed to secure the border of the United States, and impose penalties on businesses that knowingly hired or employed illegal aliens.

The last two provisions were ultimately rendered meaningless — exactly as intended. And, exactly as intended, the number of illegal border-crossers and visa-overstayers increased exponentially as a result. Nonetheless, Americans, who compete with illegals for jobs, find their school systems and medical facilities overwhelmed and their prisons filled with thousands of people who have committed hundreds of thousands of crimes, are expected to embrace this subterfuge a second time, lest they be labeled as bigots or xenophobes by the enablers of that subterfuge.

How bankrupt is the pro-illegal crowd’s argument? They have attempted to convince the nation that murder, rape, sexual molestation, etc. committed by illegal aliens is somehow acceptable because they ostensibly commit crimes at lower rates than American citizens. That these crimes would be wholly avoidable if the law as written were enforced is apparently irrelevant. Moreover, led by news organizations like the Associated Press, progressives have engaged in an Orwellian effort to eliminate any words even remotely associated with the term “illegal alien” from the American lexicon, and render the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants non-existent.

Yet the hype surrounding the other shopworn term used to convince Americans the nation requires another round of mass legalization, as in “comprehensive immigration reform,” must be seen for what it really represents: the largest attempted power grab in the history of the nation, courtesy of a globalist-minded ruling class with utter disdain for national sovereignty.

Thus the word “dreamers” must be seen for what it really is: the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent, where the purportedly reasonable idea of giving amnesty to those “who’ve never known any other way of life” will incrementally but inexorably give way to the utterly outrageous real plan — in all its chain migration, mass amnesty, pathway to citizenship, fundamentally transformational glory.

And as stated above, pro-illegal supporters will be unrelenting in their attempt to elicit compassion and guilt from the American public, and any failure to do so will be met with furiously hyperbolic condemnation.

Yet if progressives insist on framing the argument within the parameters of compassion and guilt, by all means, let’s do so. In terms of compassion, it’s time Americans recognized their fellow Americans who have endured the tragic consequences of wholesale illegality deserve far more of it than those who have perpetrated and enabled it. So do the millions of immigrants whose efforts to enter this nation through the painstaking legal process have been completely debased.

As for guilt, it’s time to point fingers at those who would countenance a fundamental transformation of their own nation for cheap labor and reliable votes, largely based on the contemptible underpinning that an inherently flawed America deserves comeuppance for being too “white,” too “Judeo-Christian” and too “exceptional” for too long.

And while the argument is being engaged, maybe — just maybe — it’s time to cut through the progressive hype with a couple of simple questions: Who doesn’t have dreams, and in what universe should the dreams of those who have no business being here supersede those of American citizens?

Americans of every race, color and creed have borne the brunt of rampant lawlessness being promoted as necessary expediency long enough.

Moreover, if the barrage of over-the-top rhetoric is inevitable, fire must be met with fire. If Americans who resist mass legalization of illegals are bigoted xenophobes, then those who have long embraced a wholesale invasion of the nation, and the subsequent law-defying machinations of sanctuary cities and deliberately porous borders intended to sustain it, must be branded as the treasonous subversives they truly are.

“Every state has become a border state,” explains columnist Arthur Schaper. “The slow erosion of the nation’s sovereignty is killing us all, literally. Every time there is talk in Washington D.C. about granting legal status to illegal aliens, more illegals crowd our borders. More rapists, murderers, drug dealers crowd the border and surround our cities and towns. How many more friends, relatives, and fellow Americans will have to die?”

Maybe as many as the globalist elites in both parties require in exchange for permanent ruling status. A status where borders, the distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and large swathes of the Constitution (if not all of it), are rendered meaningless. A status where America is a republic in name only, and the next wave of illegal invaders will be exponentially greater than the four-fold increase engendered by the amnesty and broken promises of the 1986 law. The law that was supposed to put an end to illegal immigration and amnesty, once and for all.

Fool Americans once, shame on the political ruling class. Fool Americans twice, shame on us — all the compassion and guilt in the world notwithstanding.