Thread: California Students, Caught Between Two Laws, Seek Tuition C

It's on the way!

http://www.avpress.com/n/02/0102_s9.hts

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Monday, January 2, 2006.


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Where will it end?
This is one of those "Have we all gone mad?" editorials we write around here every so often. But that's the only question we can ask when things get so turned around, as the issue of illegal immigrants and college tuition.

Some editorialists will try to make this debate out to be a complex one, with strong conflicting arguments for both sides. It's not. It's really pretty simple. It's about fairness.

In 1996, Congress made it explicitly illegal to offer any benefit to illegal immigrants that is not offered to Americans. This is common sense, but still it needed to be codified into law.

Nonetheless, nine states, including of course good old California, offer tuition breaks to illegal immigrants attending state schools.

California passed its version of the law back when Gray Davis was governor. It was the pet project of the Democrats in the state Legislature. Even so, Davis at first vetoed the bill to grant in-state tuition to any illegal immigrant who attended three years of high school here. He vetoed it because, well, see paragraph three above: It is illegal to offer any benefit to illegal immigrants that is not offered to Americans.

Davis said it would open California up to costly lawsuits. Right you are, Governor.

Not content with Davis' veto, the Democrats brought the bill back again.

This time Davis allowed it to become law by doing nothing - neither signing nor vetoing the bill. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against California by 42 students from other states who had to pay more to attend California schools than illegal immigrants.

We're not talking a few hundred dollars here. The difference is about $17,000 per year, per student - tens of millions of dollars total.

It's insane. Try sending your kid to another country illegally and then demand you get a break on your tuition.

The argument for offering the students in-state tuition is that many of them were brought here from other countries illegally by their parents, but the students themselves did nothing wrong. We understand that.

But who is responsible for them being here? Who is responsible for their education?

Their parents.

So when it comes to a question of who's going to pay that extra $17,000 to educate that child, it should be the parents, not the taxpayers of the state of California.

It comes down to simple fairness. Why should parents who live in Utah or Arizona or Texas have to pay $17,000 more than parents who came to California illegally? They shouldn't.

Isn't that simple?

Now the taxpayers of California are again going to get soaked.

One of two things will happen: Either the class-action lawsuit will succeed and we'll pay tens of millions in damages (in addition to the tens of millions we've already paid by subsidizing the illegal immigrant students) or the lawsuit will fail, but we'll pay many millions in legal fees to fight the thing, and then we'll continue to pay tens of millions of dollars in subsidies for future illegal immigrants.

Get out your checkbook.

I agree with you 100% had_enuf. The old saying "the children should not suffer the sins of the parents" does not apply here. The parents are to blame and it is they who should suffer. Also the "illegal" children are using rescources that our children could be using. I say "why should our children suffer the sins of the parents of the illegals"?

And hey I don't care if it's only a few, one is way too many for me.

Originally Posted by boxersbear

And hey I don't care if it's only a few, one is way too many for me.

Right boxersbear! I think taxpayers have already been more than generious to pay for their K-12 education. If they want college, let their parents pay for the next 4 years.