Every year, the United States grants visas to more than half a million international students. The University of Southern California has consistently ranked as the number one university taking in the best and the brightest from abroad. These are youngsters that have nothing invested in our country -- except for their own advancement -- and will likely go back home when they're done, taking with them the expertise and knowledge gained here.

At the same time, every year, 65,000 undocumented youngsters, people who have been raised and educated in the United States, graduate from high school with no prospects of attending college, joining the military, or even getting a job legally. Unlike their international counterparts, they have no rights. We educate them, feed them, teach them about America, and then we shut the door on them. All that money and energy invested for naught.

We take the best and brightest from abroad but refuse to do that with kids who have been raised here. How's that for irony?

Living in our midst are thousands of young people, teenagers who were sneaked into this country illegally by their parents. Sometimes these children arrive as infants, and as they grow up, they're often ignorant of their legal status.

It's a group that often includes the best of the best: valedictorians, athletes, all around superachievers. And once they have finished high school, their chances for advancement evaporate: with no documents they can't go on to college, into the military or get a job. We're talking about nearly 65,000 children a year who reach this milestone.

Their dilemma is one that Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin and Indiana Republican Richard Lugar have tried to address for several years. Last week, the senatorial duo re-introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, legislation that would allow young people to earn legal status as long as they met a strict criteria: they need to be enrolled in college or the military, demonstrate good moral character and stay on track for at least six years of an initial probationary period known as "conditional permanent status." If you're a glutton for congressional jargon, you can look at the bill here.

Introduction of the bill is the first concrete step into the political minefield of immigration reform, and it has already sparked fireworks: Kris Kobach, an attorney who's representing clients in Kansas and California lawsuits against similar "Dream Acts" described the legislation as a "nightmare." Writing for the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation, he said any "illegal who applies for this amnesty is immediately rewarded with a green card, which can be converted to a non-conditional green card in short order."

Kobach seems to imply that any undocumented person could apply. Wrong.  According to the text of the bill, for a person to be eligible, he or she needs to have been brought into the United States before turning 16, he or she needs to have received a degree from an institution of "higher learning," have completed two years of instruction at one of these places, or have served in the military for at least two years. Does that sound like criteria that applies to any person?  Are these institutions that mediocre that they will accept anybody who wants to get in?

He also claims that, "in short order," the conditional green card can be turned into a permanent one. The nerve! How dare people who have worked hard to earn a bachelor's degreen dream of contributing taxes to this country on a permanent basis! What are they smoking?

So far, the Dream Act has garnered 18 co-sponsors (with only two Republicans.) Because the act is aimed at people who came into the United States before they turned 16 -- children who had no say in their parents' decisions -- it stands a good chance of passing.

Maybe that's why the bill also gleans the most amount of rancor among detractors. Michelle Malkin, the self-hating Asian-looking chick who thinks it was OK to put people of Japanese ancestry in prison camps during WWII, gets diarrhea whenever somebody says "amnesty."  (I'm sure she uses it for weight control.)

It really doesn't make sense to allow students to attend elementary, middle and high school to later close all the gates for them -- just like it doesn''t make sense to educate the best and brightest from all around the world and then let them leave. That's why the Dream Act makes sense. It will be a good test to prove whether the immigrant rights movement can mobilize enough support to counteract negative forces.

The bill will be a hard sell, but it's a fight that should be fought. Thousands of young people depend on it.