The Legislative Proposal and Its Failure
The DREAM Act enters these excerpts as a proposed law that Congress did not pass. In a 2014 episode, Frank H. Buckley states that Congress “refused to pass the DREAM Act to regularize young undocumented people,” and that President Obama then acted on his own. Buckley frames this as part of a broader pattern in which executive discretion, once exercised in small ways, “seems to have been taken to the next level by Obama.” He notes that George Bush had used signing statements, and that Elizabeth Drew in the New York Review of Books had detected “the whiff of fascism” in Bush’s reservations about military matters, but that with immigration the executive action was occurring “at an exponentially larger level.” Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014)
The 2018 episode returns to the same failure. Sheldon Gilbert recounts that President Obama, when asked by news reporters whether he could deal with the problem of Dreamers by executive order after the DREAM Act did not pass, initially said, “You know, in the United States, I’m not a king, I can’t just wave a wand and do whatever I want.” Gilbert states that Obama later issued not an executive order but an executive action that “essentially opened the path to do through executive regulations and other actions what Congress failed to do through the DREAM Act.” Gilbert describes the conservative reaction: critics said the president was “skipping over Article 1” and “skipping Congress to try and do what you want but you can’t get done through Congress.” Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
The Broken System Argument
In the 2011 episode, guest Sophia Campos describes the immigration system as broken and explains why the DREAM Act matters to her. She states that there is “no one line that people can get into in order to become permanent legal residents here in the United States,” and that she learned of her own status as an undocumented person during her senior year of high school. She says she has been in the United States since she was six years old, grew up in its educational system, and is now a college student, but that “there is no pathway for me to gain my legal residency here.” She states that “that’s why the DREAM Act is so important,” and that there are 12 million undocumented people in the country who cannot all be deported. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Campos also addresses Secure Communities and collaborations between police and ICE, saying it is important for undocumented people not to feel they have to live in fear, to remain visible, and to continue paying taxes. She says the stereotype that undocumented people do not pay taxes is wrong, that she and her parents prove it wrong every year, and that many other communities besides Latinos are undocumented. Host Bob Zadek, in the same episode, states his own view in four words: “let them all in.” He favors as open a border as possible, subject to screening out “the baddest of the bad,” people carrying disease, and people with very serious records. He argues that the problem is in the law, not in the number of immigrants, and asks whether opponents of illegal immigration oppose the illegal part or the immigrant part. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Amnesty as a Policy Device
In the 2011 episode, Zadek argues that amnesty is a legitimate public technique. He notes that when Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment, people who had been felons a day earlier were no longer felons, and no one demanded they still go to jail. He also notes that taxing authorities constantly offer amnesty programs to people who have misstated their tax liability, waiving penalties and jail time in exchange for payment, and that this “produces buckets of money.” He says that if amnesty were declared, undocumented residents could come out of hiding and participate fully in the system, relieving law enforcement of a burden. He contrasts this with the indignation that greets any public official who proposes amnesty. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Executive Action and the Separation of Powers
The 2018 episode places the DREAM Act’s failure within a constitutional argument about executive orders. Gilbert explains that Article 1, Section 1 vests all legislative powers in the legislative branch, and that the theory for executive orders is most commonly located in the Take Care Clause, which obligates the president to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. He says critics argue that the executive branch is doing more and more of the lawmaking rather than Congress, and that one species of this is the executive order. He notes that in the Obama administration, conservatives and libertarians said the president was trying to achieve by executive action what he could not get through Congress, and that this violated basic separation of powers. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Zadek asks what can be done when a president crosses the line and legislates through executive order in violation of Article 1. Gilbert begins to answer that Congress can step in, and when Zadek notes there are about 30 seconds left, Gilbert adds that Congress can deal with it or “you can go to court,” and that such issues often get resolved by the court and may reach the Supreme Court. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Birthright Citizenship and the DREAM Act’s Constitutional Context
The 2018 episode also discusses birthright citizenship, which Gilbert says has never been directly addressed by the Supreme Court after Wong Kim Ark. He states that there is no case directly on point answering whether Section 1 of the 14th Amendment covers the children of unlawfully undocumented immigrants, and that the issue has not reached the Supreme Court in part because Congress has legislated extensively in the area, with federal statutes and regulations assuming birthright citizenship is the law of the land. He says the constitutional question cannot be reached without first getting past the legislative question. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Zadek notes that President Trump proposed to act by executive order on birthright citizenship rather than by constitutional amendment or legislation, and asks where executive orders fit. Gilbert responds with the Article 1, Section 1 framework and the Take Care Clause, and notes that the Obama administration’s immigration action was one of the most famous examples of the controversy. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Across episodes
The DREAM Act appears in three episodes across seven years, and the treatment shifts. In 2011, Sophia Campos presents the DREAM Act as a necessary response to a broken system with no legal pathway for people brought to the country as children. In 2014, Frank H. Buckley presents Congress’s refusal to pass the DREAM Act as the trigger for Obama’s unilateral action, which he describes as an exponential expansion of executive discretion. In 2018, Sheldon Gilbert presents the same failure as the origin of an executive action that critics called a violation of separation of powers, and connects it to the broader debate over executive orders and the Take Care Clause. The earlier episodes emphasize the moral and practical case for legalization; the later episodes emphasize the constitutional mechanism by which the failure was addressed and the separation-of-powers objections it provoked.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the DREAM Act’s formal name, its legislative sponsors, the years it was introduced, or the specific provisions it would have enacted. They do not state whether any version of the DREAM Act ever passed either chamber of Congress, nor do they describe the executive action’s formal name or legal basis beyond the general reference to executive regulations. The excerpts do not state the outcome of any litigation over the executive action, nor do they give the current status of the DREAM Act or of the undocumented people it would have affected.