DNC Vice Chair Keith Ellison is making no bones about it: the national party has a litmus test for candidates when it comes to protecting illegal aliens.

Ellison told Pennsylvania Democrats assembled in a church sanctuary that candidates better support a “clean DREAM Act,” or those candidates would run into trouble with the party.

During an event with “Allentown Dreamers” on Friday afternoon, Ellison issued a warning to those who step out of line with the DNC heavies.

“There cannot be one single politician in the state of Pennsylvania who is in a state of confusion about how you feel,” he told the audience.

“We’re going to make it perfectly clear to all of them on a repeated basis,” he said.

“And yes, we have a litmus test,” Ellison declared.

“If you are a Democrat who doesn’t like a clean Dream Act, you’re gonna have some problems,” he warned. “And don’t count on me to protect you. You’re on your own with that!”

The DNC may be taking a hard line with candidates because its future political fortunes are tied to creating new voters.

That was indicated back in 2009, when then-SEIU Executive Vice President and a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America, Eliseo Medina, addressed the “America’s Future Now!” conference, saying:

Now as you know, the negative tone of the immigration debate has created intense interest in the Latino and immigrant community. We in the last election had the largest turnout of Latino voters in our history. And everything tell us these voters fully intend to become engaged into the elections in the future. They have tasted what it is like to participate and win and they are not going to go away. Because their involvement is basically because they feel that they are being taken advantage of, they are being singled out and they are being scapegoated.

Now, when they voted in November [2008], they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got 2 out of every 3 voters that showed up and so I think there’s two things, very quickly, that matter for the progressive community:

1. If we are to expect this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future. And let me tell you, when you are in the middle of a fight for your life, you will remember who was there with you. [intelligible]

2. We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have even the same ratio – two out of three – 8 million new voters that care about our issue and will be voting. We will create a governing coalition for the long-term, not just for an election cycle.