Thread: Debates Persist Over Subsidies for Immigrant College Student

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December 12, 2007
On Education
Debates Persist Over Subsidies for Immigrant College Students
By JOSEPH BERGER
Go to college, we urge our children. College is the new high school, and without an undergraduate degree, they will be doomed to low-earning, second-rate lives.

Yet we send the opposite message to thousands of young people because they have been brought into this country illegally by their parents, sometimes when they were toddlers, or remained beyond their visa deadlines. About 65,000 persevere well enough every year to graduate from high school, according to the Washington-based Urban Institute, but once they do, we make going to college hard if not impossible.

Ysaira Paulino was a slim, dark-haired 13-year-old in 1998, when her mother put her and a younger sister aboard a plane leaving the Dominican Republic. It was her mother’s frank hope that her daughters could blossom in America’s public schools. As a frightened newcomer speaking little English and living sometimes with an aunt and sometimes with a grandmother, Ysaira weathered eighth grade.

Then, at Lehman High School in the Bronx, she earned a 94 average, making it into the Arista honor society. Even though she had overstayed her visa, she was fortunate that she lived in one of 10 states that make illegal immigrants eligible for the less expensive public college tuition that all state residents pay.

But City College of New York’s annual tuition and fees of more than $4,000 were still beyond reach, and as an illegal immigrant, she could not qualify for federal or state aid or get work-study jobs. Those require Social Security cards. She had to work off the books as a tutor or translator. Her college debt proved too much, and midway into her junior year she gave up school to work, a leave she hopes will end next semester. She eventually wants to apply to law school.

“I didn’t ask to come here, I was brought here,â€

The New york Times Rotten Fishwrap conjures up another Immigration Sob Story by finding a few invaders to whine about how unfair life is in the U.S. for invaders. If it's so easy for the slimy NY Times to find these invaders, why can't ICE?

Yet we send the opposite message to thousands of young people because they have been brought into this country illegally by their parents, sometimes when they were toddlers, or remained beyond their visa deadlines.

How about the terrible message we are sending to these young people by NOT punishing their parents!

The world-renowned Autonomous University of Mexico is FREE to all Mexican nationals and no entrance exam is required. The University of San Carlos in Guatemala cost about $110.00 per year. Most public colleges and univeristies in MExico, Central and South AMerican including the Dom. Republic and Haiti are virtually free and in most cases annual tuition costs less than what an American college student would pay for a semester's worth of textbooks and supplies. These kids can go to college for free or virtually free in their home countries, nothing is preventing them from pursuing higher education. They are acting like self-entitled brats who forgo the opportunties that they DO have and instead pout and whine because they want something that they have no right to demand.

They should go home, study in their home countries. They then would have a much better chance of returning to the U.S. legally armed with a college degree, a profession and English language skills. That would make sense.

The New York Times, always reporting their agenda without looking at the danger...