Thread: California "Dream Act" approved for illegal immigr

California "Dream Act" approved for illegal immigrants


.....LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Monday a bill allowing illegal immigrants to receive privately funded scholarships to attend the state's public colleges and universities.

The bill, dubbed the California Dream Act, passed the state Legislature earlier this month and aims at helping illegal immigrants who earned a diploma after attending at least three years of high school in the state.

Enactment of the California measure came three days after opponents of a similar law in Maryland collected enough signatures to force a state referendum seeking its repeal.

"At the end of the day, if we're going to continue as a powerful, equal-opportunity society, we're going to have to invest in our people," Brown, a Democrat, said at the signing ceremony in the library of a Los Angeles community college.

The California law is named after national legislation in Congress to give young, undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years a pathway to citizenship through college or military service.

The federal bill failed to win passage in December 2010, and its chances have dimmed since a newly elected Republican majority took control of the House of Representatives.

Critics say the California Dream Act gives illegal immigrants a false promise because their status will not change after graduating from college and they will remain unable to find legal employment. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, vetoed an earlier version of the bill last year.

But Julian Rivera, 20, a student at the University of California at Berkeley who entered the United States illegally with his parents at age 12 from Mexico, said the measure could make it easier those like him to afford to stay in school.

"It doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't matter what your background is, it just matters that you have passion for something and you want to do it," he said. "This is a country that has given us that freedom."

OPPOSING "THE DREAM"

Patrick McDonough, a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates who helped lead the petition drive for the repeal initiative there, said U.S. citizens who are struggling to pay for college should not have to compete with illegal immigrants for scarce financial resources.

"People would say, 'Why should we, when we're having tough economic times ourselves, pay for someone who is here illegally?'" he said.

The new California law is fairly limited in scope, making undocumented students who qualify eligible for private scholarships. A separate bill under consideration in the legislature would allow illegal immigrants to seek publicly funded scholarships as well.

State law already allows illegal immigrants who qualify for admission to a four-year state university to pay in-state tuition rather than the more expensive out-of-state tuition rate. But four-year institutions are still beyond reach for many undocumented students without financial aid.

Twelve other states also grant in-state tuition eligibility to illegal immigrants based on attendance and graduation from a state high school, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina and Indiana have laws barring illegal immigrants from in-state tuition benefits.

Passage of legislation in California and Maryland to extend private scholarships to illegal immigrants comes as a number of states, led by Arizona, have taken steps to crack down on the undocumented.

"You're going to see the red states go more the Arizona approach and blue states the California Dream Act approach," said John Skrentny, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at University of California, San Diego.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman and Cynthia Johnston


http://news.yahoo.com/california-dream- ... 17230.html

"At the end of the day, if we're going to continue as a powerful, equal-opportunity society, we're going to have to invest in our people,"


No Mr Brown. These are not our people. They are Mexico's people. This isnt your North American Union just yet.

The new California law is fairly limited in scope, making undocumented students who qualify eligible for private scholarships. A separate bill under consideration in the legislature would allow illegal immigrants to seek publicly funded scholarships as well.

State law already allows illegal immigrants who qualify for admission to a four-year state university to pay in-state tuition rather than the more expensive out-of-state tuition rate. But four-year institutions are still beyond reach for many undocumented students without financial aid.

This is what the Dream act is all about, OUR MONEY!! They don't want to even pay in-state tuition, they want a FREE college education. Guess CA has got plenty of $$$ to throw away.

WE NEED CALLS TO THE CONGRESS TODAY!

PLEASE HELP HERE
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-244977.html

This is bs. I'm glad i'm leaving CA soon. Illegals get away with murder here. I can't wait until the state collapses.

WE NEED CALLS TO THE CONGRESS TODAY!

PLEASE HELP HERE
http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-1249293.html#1249293

Brown signs private-scholarship part of Dream Act

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Sacramento -- Undocumented immigrants who attend California universities and colleges will have greater access to privately funded scholarships after Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed into law a portion of what is known as the Dream Act.

A more controversial portion of the act, to allow undocumented students to receive publicly funded financial aid, is still pending in the Legislature.

The two bills differ from a federal proposal with the same name; the state Dream Act does not provide a path to citizenship.

Brown signed AB130 by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, at a ceremony in Los Angeles.

"Today signing this Dream Act is another piece of investment in people, because people are what drives the culture, the economy, the state and our country," Brown said, using Cedillo's back instead of a table as the surface on which he signed the bill.

The bill will become law Jan. 1 and will allow students to apply for the scholarship money for which they previously were ineligible. Higher education officials do not have precise statistics on how many students could benefit, as they do not track their immigration status. Also, private scholarships from endowments, annual gifts or other sources make up a small portion of overall financial aid for higher education.

"It's a pretty small number" of students affected, said Mike Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for the California State University chancellor's office. He said the CSU system oversees $25.7 million in private scholarships but students in the system receive a total of $2.4 billion in state and federal aid.

The students who are newly eligible are enrolled in California's higher education system under another law that was passed in 2001, AB540, which allows nonresidents who attend at least three years of high school and graduate in the state to pay in-state tuition. Not all of those students are undocumented.

CSU has 3,600 such students in the entire 412,000-student population, Uhlenkamp said.

At the University of California, officials estimate that there are as many as 642 undocumented students enrolled at the 10 campuses and that about 80 would be eligible to apply for private scholarships under the new law. There are nearly 235,000 students in the UC system.

And in California's community colleges, there are more than 34,000 students enrolled under AB540, compared with a total student population of 2.7 million.

Many of the private scholarships have specific restrictions on who can receive them, so the law does not make these students eligible for all the private money. Opponents of the measure had argued that it would take scholarship money from students who are in the country legally.

E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1KES77.DTL

Brown is nothing more than a Dem Slug. Well if Cal wants to foot the bill for educating illegals then let them. Just don't expect the rest of the country to do the same. Let cal sink under the economic weight of the illegal invasion and lets just keep the rest of AMERICA AMERICAN.

Let cal sink under the economic weight of the illegal invasion and lets just keep the rest of AMERICA AMERICAN.

As much as we may think that is a good idea have you thought about the consequences? This is sounding like a divide and conquer scenerio..."divided we fall" What is to say it isn't coming your States way? Sounds like that is what they are trying to do State by State...

Many of the private scholarships have specific restrictions on who can receive them, so the law does not make these students eligible for all the private money. Opponents of the measure had argued that it would take scholarship money from students who are in the country legally.

Mark my words, this WILL take scholarship money from students who are here legally.

For example, The Gates Millenium Scholarship fund thru the Hispanic Scholarship Foundation requires you be a US citizen or legal permanent resident with supporting documentation. The next step for dreamies is to pressure the HSF into opening up this "privately-funded" scholarship to illegal aliens, thereby taking it away from legal students.

Dreamies will use thug tactics against companies, to divert "privately-funded" scholarship programs to themselves.

Brown is a dumb tool who got played and is too stupid to realize it. I feel for you Cali, but ya voted for him.