Dick Durbin announced this morning that he is no longer trying to tack it onto an immigration bill. Many of the Republicans who voted for the amnesty surge and/or initially supported the DREAM act, ended up switching sides due to public outrage. This is a very powerful development that shows that the open borders lobby is one the defensive, and the patriotic immigration reform movement has not gotten lazy after defeating 1348. [Hope fades for passage of bill to aid young illegal immigrants By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT, Sept. 26, 2007, Houston Chronicl]

We still cannot be complacent. The amnesty crowd has insisted that they will continue to press the issue. While we have defeated the DREAM act many times, they only need to win once.

It is also significant, that the conservative movement that took credit for defeating the amnesty has been complacent. Very few blogs, and most of the main talk radio hosts who vehemently opposed the initial amnesty gave little or no notice to the DREAM act. National Review’s coverage was limited to one column and a pair of blog posts by Mark Krikorian.

The Johnny come lately restrictionists did not defeat 1348 or the DREAM Act. It was groups like Numbers USA, The Eagle Forum, and my own Team America Act that rallied their supporters to the cause. I’d love for Mark Krikorian to write more good articles for National Review and for other conservatives to get on board, but we shouldn’t give them undue credit, lest we let them take over and soften the patriotic immigration reform movement.