LETTER: Universities should check immigrant status
January 14, 2008 8:55 PM

I recommend that the Legislature pass a law that creates criminal and civil penalties for the chancellor of any state university in the commonwealth of Massachusetts that does not have excellent procedures in force to rigorously check documentation of legal status in the United States of student applicants before accepting them for admission. With student status visas, this would also keeping track of current status of visas. It would require checking current students for legal status in the United States.

It would also require the state university to report all violations to INS for immediate action.

There are many legal ways to gain higher education, and a university, operating with some state funding, must be held to account for aiding and abetting illegal aliens to break our immigration laws. And the buck stops with the chancellor and the deans of colleges with their own admissions staffs.

I don't mind paying taxes to improve education for U.S. citizens, or bringing commuter rail to Southeastern Massachusetts, or repairing our infrastructure, but it stops there. We are not yet Amnesty International.

Bernard Roth
Dartmouth