Listening to Nancy Pelosi, one might conclude illegal immigrants are actually more patriotic — and more American — than real, live Americans.

While defending protections for illegals created unilaterally by President Obama, the House Minority Leader’s rhetoric stew boiled over outside the Capitol today.

“A week and a half ago I was in Chicago and I saw this art exhibit that I was invited to see,” Pelosi said.

“It’s called, ‘And Then They Came For Me.’ And it’s about the internment of the Japanese American patriots in our country who were interred— interned into camps during World War II while their family members were fighting for freedom for America and for the world in Word War II, they were in camps,” she said of the action authorized by Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“‘And They Came For Me,'” she repeated.

“And now, they’re coming for the Dreamers. This is something— we owe these Dreamers for their patriotism, their courage, their optimism to come forward,” Pelosi said.

“But it’s about America, too,” she continued. “What the fight is, who we are as a country. They are the manifestation of that fight right now.

“But we cannot let them come for them,” Pelosi said.

While Pelosi attempts to paint a rosy picture of the so-called Dreamers, stats show her rhetoric may be purely for political purposes.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies:

• 73 percent of DACA recipients he surveyed live in a low-income household (defined as qualifying for free lunch in high school);
• 22 percent have earned a degree from a four-year college or university;
• 21 percent have dropped out of high school;
• 20 percent have no education beyond high school and no plans to attend college;
• 59 percent obtained a new job with a DACA work permit, but only 45 percent increased their overall earnings;
• 36 percent have a parent who holds a bachelor’s degree; and
• 51 percent were already employed before DACA.

“None of this is to suggest that these individuals should not be considered for an amnesty or legalization program, but to suggest that the arguments in favor of such a program are largely political rather than economic,” according to the Center.

“Immigrants who are not highly educated and who are working in low-paying jobs are more likely to access welfare and other public assistance programs over the course of their lives.

“If Congress decides to enact an amnesty program, which I think is likely, then it would make sense from a fiscal standpoint to cut other forms of legal immigration, such as the chain migration categories, that also tend to strain our public coffers,” the Center reports.