Demonstrators in Sacramento today, fighting for federal legislation to give undocumented immigrants access to financial aid for college, have every reason to feel good about themselves and their struggle.

A release supporting the DREAM Act from the United States Student Association Foundation argues soundly that federal policy should not punish children for the criminal behavior of their parents.

The supporters also say that too few students will qualify to make a detrimental impact on public universities or financial aid funding. They argue further that as college graduates, the affected students will earn much higher incomes and therefore pay higher taxes, alleviating whatever burden they initially place on the education budget.

But the DREAM Act remains a mistake California should avoid supporting.

Children aren’t responsible for the actions of their parents, but parents are responsible for their children, and opportunistic potential immigrants will see the DREAM Act as one more reason to sneak their kids into the country, knowing in advance their irresponsibility won’t hurt their children as much as it would without the safety net this legislation provides.

Many argue that legal immigration is too difficult for those who desperately need to enter the United States, and that measures such as the DREAM Act are necessary to mitigate the rough conditions immigrants face as a result. There’s truth in that premise, but this problem-solving approach puts the cart before the horse; legislature like the DREAM Act puts patches on the problem while taking pressure off Congress to solve the problem’s source.

If the bureaucratic inefficiency and difficult standards of legal immigration are causing problems, it’s those governmental shortcomings that need attention. We have nearly 320,000 citizenship applicants waiting just for the FBI’s mandatory name checks, with more than 61,000 now waiting for more than two years, according to a recent report by the Boston Globe. It makes sense that the FBI wants to be more careful about accepting new citizens in a post-9/11 world, but this is just one example of how we make illegal immigration a more attractive option for desperate refugees.

Scrambling to cover up the problems these inefficiencies create simply makes it easier for Congress to ignore the more important causal issues.

If we’re concerned about educational opportunities for impoverished immigrant students, we should consider the countries they come from and look at diverting funds to assist public education in those places. True compassion for the hardships faced by your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free includes analyzing the context in which they come to us. After all, for every person who is able to scrounge up the cash they need to make it here, how many more never get the opportunity?

It is a noble goal to work for the well-being of our country’s most disadvantaged individuals, and struggling immigrants working to make their way through college are a great group to help. But proponents of the DREAM Act are looking at short-term solutions that won’t solve the biggest problems facing that group and our country as a whole.