http://www.roswell-record.com/archives/ ... ews06.html

Adair seeks to limit state benefits for illegal immigrants
Ashley Meeks
Record Staff Writer

The days of state scholarships and driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants may be over if Sen. Rod Adair, R-Roswell, has anything to say about it.

Currently being heard in committee, three measures Adair recently introduced would give financial aid only to students who are American citizens, make a tax ID number insufficient to get a driver’s license and heighten the penalties to human smugglers who facilitate illegal immigrants’ entry into the state.

Roswell Police Chief John Balderston calls illegal immigration an “ongoing problem” in Roswell, and said Adair’s bills are good ideas.

“The fact is, we’re a nation of laws,” Balderston said. “To give some benefits to someone who has not followed the laws really fouls the water for those who wish to do it right.”

One of those people who followed the laws is Hagerman resident and business-owner Jose Chavez. When he was 2, the Juarez native’s parents brought him across the border in search of work. He kept resident alien status until 1985, when, after the birth of his third child, his wife began to pressure him about becoming a citizen.

“My wife was afraid they’d come and take me away. My wife was worried to death,” he recalled.

Even if he didn’t have anything to worry about, Chavez said getting his citizenship was definitely the right thing to do.

“I always felt better doing it right. I’ve always felt that,” Chavez said.

The New Mexico Legislature, in 2005, passed legislation making access to benefits including university admission, eligibility for in-state tuition, scholarships and loans independent of immigration status to the estimated 50-250 illegal immigrants currently enrolled in New Mexico universities.

Lower dropout rates for illegal immigrants were predicted, with the head of New Mexico State University a vocal proponent of the legislation in that school’s newspaper, saying with access to state scholarships illegal immigrants would better be able to help the state’s economy.

NMSU rules makes students living within 135 miles of the campus eligible for in-state tuition. Provost William Flores told The Round Up, the NMSU student newspaper, “If you can give it to athletes or to Texans, why not to illegal immigrants? They’re simply one more group.”

Juan Oropesa, executive director of the Roswell Hispano Chamber of Commerce, thinks that allowing in-state tuition, scholarships and driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants is ultimately a good thing for everyone.

“It’s more good than bad to give them licenses,” said the Artesia native. Without a driver’s license, he said, someone can’t get insurance. And without insurance, in an accident, the other driver suffers because of it. “Illegal immigrants come over and obviously, they’re going to get around one way or another. I think it’s better for them to have a driver’s license so they would have to fulfill the requirements for having insurance.”

And when it comes to in-state tuition and scholarships, Oropesa says anyone who contributes like an American citizen should get those educational benefits.

“The more people that you can educate, I think the better off our nation is. If you have somebody that is living here, paying taxes, obviously contributing to the economy of wherever they are living, I don’t see any problem with it,” Oropesa said. “I know the argument of, ‘they’re taking away from our kids,’ but I think in the long run it’s a benefit to anybody, the more education the kids and individuals have the better off we are.”

Adair disagrees. While he’s not in favor of denying emergency medical services or kindergarten to 5-year-olds whose status is no fault of their own, he said, driver’s licenses and lottery-funded scholarships should be reserved for those who follow the law.

According to a 2004 government survey, there are 39,000 illegal immigrants in New Mexico alone — 2 percent of the state’s total population.

Adding to that number is just too easy, Adair says.

“Yeah. With an estimated 16 million (illegal immigrants in the country) I think that’s pretty much evidence that it is,” Adair said.

It’s not just fear of New Mexico’s international border with Mexico. Adair says the main concern he hears is that of a post-9/11 world concerned with anti-American rhetoric from Middle Eastern immigrants.

Calling such measures as his racist, or anti-Mexican, is “just plain stupid,” Adair said.

In fact, “the ones saying that are making a racist statement ... that Mexican people, their only goal is to come here and break laws,” Adair said.

In the face of economic and cultural concerns, Adair said it’s bunk to argue, as some have, that allowing illegal immigrants driver’s licenses reduces insurance costs and flight from accidents, and that allowing illegal immigrants lottery scholarships encourages them to contribute to the economy and boost high school graduation rates.

“The cost of illegal immigration — to schools, hospitals, emergency rooms, law enforcement, insurance — is enormous,” Adair said.

And beyond the cost, said Roswell’s mayor, who supports the bills, is the simple matter of ethics.

“I do not believe that illegal immigrants should have a New Mexico driver’s license,” Mayor Sam LaGrone said, “nor do I believe that they should be able to take advantage of our lottery-funded scholarships. Those should be for the citizens of New Mexico only and I think for them to qualify, they need to become citizens.”

The American public seems to agree. In a New York Times poll from 2006, 61 percent of respondents said the cost of providing illegal immigrants with education and health care concerned them. A substantial majority, 75 percent, said government services, such as health care or food stamps, should be off-limits. Nearly as many agreed with the nix on driver’s licenses. A slight majority, 51 percent, said public schools should close their doors to illegal immigrants.

And according to results of a Pew Hispanic Center study last year, though 40 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants should be granted some kind of amnesty, like a temporary workers’ program, a majority of Americans said illegal immigrants should be required to go home, reflecting what the center called increasing concern on the subject.

“A growing number,” the Center reported, “believe that immigrants are a burden to the country, taking jobs and housing and creating strains on the health care system.”

Adair called deportation “the proper approach,” though with up to 20 million illegal immigrants in the country he admitted it’s a bit of an unwieldy one.

In theory, he said, immigration laws are no less enforceable than any other laws — it’s the will to enforce them that’s important.

“We have to have the will and I think the will is growing,” Adair said.

In addition, he said, being an illegal immigrant can only encourage more crime. “If you start out as a fugitive, I think there’s no question that you’re going to commit crime after crime,” Adair said. “The prisons are filling up with illegal aliens.”

For Chavez, the road to citizenship was an easy one to pick, he said. Knowing not a word of English at Weed Elementary School, he said, he learned the language fast out of necessity. And after becoming a citizen himself, he realized that the burden it took off him had weighed far more than the burden of paying for school, or getting a driver’s license.

“I’m in support of people having legal documentation,” Chavez said. “You’ve got to make an effort ... not just take advantage.”

He says it’s too frequent of a story these days.

“A lot of people who come over and just expect the government to support their kids. I don’t think that’s fair,” Chavez said.

Even though he thinks current immigration laws could be made easier for those who wish to become citizens, he said it’s no reason to circumvent the law. And that’s something the college graduate and now-successful business owner and oil man wishes he could impress upon other immigrants.

“I would say to them, the legal way is the right way,” he said. “That way, you’re never looking back, or looking behind you, or over your shoulder.”