Sunday, September 21, 2008

In-state Tuition For Illegals?

I've stated here before that while the legislature can possibly grant in-state tuition for college to illegal immigrants, that's a subject for the voters and legislators and not for the courts--unless doing so conflicts with some other law (see this post and the first comment). And if you have any doubt as to my position on the greater topic of illegal immigration and access to higher education, this post should clarify things. In fact, just the title of that post should help clarify things.

This past week a state court of appeal ruled against these tuition breaks:

In a unanimous opinion, Justice Rick Sims wrote that the tuition policy "stands as an obstacle" to Congress' objective to limit immigrants' access to public resources...

Kobach said the universities can appeal to the California Supreme Court. No representatives of the universities could be reached for comment.


Our UC campuses must be having a hard time filling classes with American students, so they fight to be allowed to give tuition breaks to foreigners who are here illegally. I'm sure my seniors will be happy to learn that there are so many slots at the UC's.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The legislature has already spoken . . .to get in-state tuition you need to be a legal resident of California. The UC system has chosen to ignore this, and mke the requirement residency, not citizenship.

As such, this should be a matter for the courts, because any system that allows an illegal immigrant from Mazatlan to pay less for college then a natural born citizen from Rhode Island is wrong.

Dan

Anonymous said...

....at leasts your seniors aren't selling their virginity for tuition money

Ellen K said...

Texas has been doing that too, which ticks me off since my kids don't get a break even WITH high GPA's. The kids are touted as role models and get grants and scholarships. I know kids who don't fit the illegal immigrant criteria who are in much worse financial shape but who don't get aide. They work two or three jobs to go to college. When my daughter was an RA, she dreaded dealing with some of the scholarship kids like this because the pressure was so high to keep them in school no matter what. So they broke rules about having opposite sex visitors overnight, drinking, drug use and countless other things, but got away with it because the message was they were desired at campus. It really does so much for the morale of the rest of the students when they realize how little they matter in the final scheme of things.