Does Rep. Tim Toomey care about American college students?

Massachusetts state Representative Tim Toomey - a proud Democrat - writes a column to all those who opposed his efforts to give citizens of other countries discounted college educations unavailable to some of his fellow American citizens: "In-state tuition bill opponents misguided":

In the weeks since An Act Relative to In-State Tuition Rates and Fees at Public Higher Education Facilities (S764/H1230) was defeated, my office has received a steady stream of phone calls, e-mails and letters in regards to that highly publicized bill. While I am grateful to the numerous people who contacted me and thanked me for supporting it, I would like to respond to those who opposed the bill and celebrated its defeat.

Your celebration is misguided, your cause shortsighted and your gleeful contempt for the people affected by this legislation startling.

What a nice rhetorical flourish! Note, of course, that he's portraying all who opposed this anti-American bill as showing contempt.

The defeat of this bill did nothing to stem the tide of undocumented immigrants to this country.

It probably did some good towards dissuading illegal aliens from bringing their teenage children to Toomey's state expecting to get discounted college educations though.

But it did deny several hundred young people the chance topay $9,000 a year to attend a Massachusetts public university... many of those students will now be unable to afford the $18,000 out-of-state tuition rate and will not attend college.

That's one of those unfortunate choices that illegal immigration presents us with. In fact, if there were no supporters of illegal immigration like Rep. Toomey, then we wouldn't have to make this choice.

See, there's a choice involved. There are only so many discounted college eductions available. And, every discounted education that's given to an illegal alien represents one that does not go to a U.S. citizen. (See the example in "Holly Mullen of Salt Lake Tribune can't think things through").

Would you be better served by a generation of employable, tax-paying, highly skilled college graduates, even if they were undocumented immigrants

Illegal aliens are not "employable", at least to those employers who follow the law.

or would you be better served by a generation of undocumented immigrants, unable to attend college, unable to find a job paying a living-wage, forced to depend on the state?

Those illegal aliens are citizens of other countries, and as such are able to obtain discounted college educations from their countries.

Numerous organizations, including the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, stated repeatedly that the in-state tuition bill would have no effect on the admissions prospects of qualified citizen applicants.

Apparently they also live in a fantasy world where there's always more discounted college educations than applicants for those discounts.

Plus, these students would not be the first non-Massachusetts' citizens to get a financial break at our state colleges and universities. Students from the five other New England states pay only $857 more than Massachusetts' residents, so in essence your tax dollars are already being used to subsidize noncitizen students.

I think the Rep. misunderstands basic American concepts like citizenship and he clearly puts the interests of foreign citizens ahead of the interests of his fellow American citizens. Based on that, the various statements in this column, and his support for such an explicitly anti-American bill, I wonder whether he's really qualified for his job.

Please write him and let him know what you think.

Immigration · Thu, 02/09/2006 - 02:03 · · Importance: 1