OUR VIEW: Blame for tuition issue lies with feds
January 13, 2008 6:00 AM

It should surprise no one that Gov. Deval Patrick will face a sharp backlash if he attempts to bypass the Legislature and order state colleges and universities to allow illegal immigrants to pay the same tuition rates as legal Massachusetts residents.

The public does not support such a move, and Gov. Mitt Romney, now a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, had broad support when he vetoed a 1994 effort to give in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, although by 1996, nine other states had already decided to do so.

But before Gov. Patrick is condemned for considering the use of executive authority to impose the change, we should put the blame squarely where it belongs: on the federal government.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Washington share the blame for a fiasco that the states are left trying to fix: what to do with millions of people here illegally and in need of all kinds of help from government at all levels?

The federal government's failure to control our borders has meant that perhaps

12 million have sneaked across the border, taken low-paying jobs without medical benefits, thus placing the cost of their medical care squarely on hospitals and health clinics. Their children, who are of course blameless for any of the problems, require education. And the cost of providing service to a vast population of illegals is greater than the taxes they pay on the income they earn.

And so governors across the country have been left holding the bag while Congress and the White House have failed to come up with a compromise that cuts off the tide of new cross-border arrivals, protects our national security, and provides those who are here now with the means for attaining legal residency and status.

And state leaders have paid a heavy price. Look just to the south, where New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was forced in September to abandon his plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants when a public outcry made such a move politically impossible.

"When the federal government abdicates its responsibilities, states, cities, towns and villages still have to deal with the practical reality of that failure. And we face that reality every day in our schools, in our hospitals and on our roads," Gov. Spitzer said.

He is absolutely right, and we suspect that Gov. Patrick is about to learn the same lesson. Talk radio will demonize him, ordinary middle-class citizens struggling to pay their rising tax bills, heating bills and tuition costs for their children will scream, and Gov. Patrick will be forced to reverse course.

And again, it will be the responsibility of Congress and the White House to fix this broken system now before states like Massachusetts drown in the flood of social, political and economic troubles that unchecked illegal immigration has unleashed.
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