Colleges reach out to <strike>illegal aliens</strike> students

[UPDATE: The insidevc.com article is moved or missing. A cached version is here.]

This article "Colleges reach out to immigrant students" inspired me to write the following letter:

Your article [] reads more like a Maldef flyer than a real newspaper article.

Nowhere in the article did you discuss any possible downsides of this new law, or present any dissenting voices. To help you out, here's a start: please tell me why illegal immigrants pay less tuition than U.S. citizens. Does that make sense to you?

Can you imagine, for instance, a U.S. citizen who was an illegal immigrant into Quebec paying less tuition than a Canadian citizen from British Columbia? That'd be pretty crazy, eh?

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that "Alondra" is going to college. Perhaps, as part of her intellectual development she should strive to be intellectually honest and say something like "I know it's crazy that I as an illegal immigrant should pay less tuition than a U.S. citizen, but that's the law. Go figure!"

If I had Alondra's email address, I'd suggest she might want to take "Introduction to Ethics" or "Introduction to Logic". Or, perhaps some pre-law classes, or, best of all, Introduction to Civics.

How absolutely, positively heartless of me. To suggest that poor "Alondra" is taking advantage of the system! What would you have her do, work at BurgerKing?

Well, I agree it's better that Alondra should go to college than BK, but, that still ignores the manifest unfairness of this new law. What about, for instance, all those poor little Alondras and other Students of Color who are U.S. citizens, but residents of another state? Alondra is being subsidized at the expense of a state with a $21 billion deficit. Couldn't the money Alondra is taking from the rest of us be spent on providing services to actual citizens?

Oh god, here they come again. They're trotting out Alondra. "Look at poor little Alondra, she needs and education!"

Yes, but, what's she doing here in the first place? OK, I know her parents brought her here, so in that respect she's somewhat blameless. She's also of legal age and a citizen of another country. Perhaps she should, gasp!, go home? Perhaps her parents should have never brought her here?

Perhaps laws like these just incentivize more illegal immigration. Perhaps we should try to create a few laws here and there that actually disincentivize illegal immigration.

One way to look at this law is as a form of foreign aid. When we send money to, for instance, Egypt, that money is spent in Egypt on Egyptian citizens, almost all of whom are living within Egypt's borders. The only way this law is different is that the recipients of this foreign aid are living within our borders.

On a different note, this article about Cesar Chavez is pretty interesting.

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Comments

All Alondra's or Pablitos should have the chance to succeed in this world, you know why? The pursue of happiness as a professional worker who is willing to contribute to the economy of a nation which is striving for a better world without terrorism, dictatorships,etc and is trying to seek a better life for herself should be given a chance and not be neglected just like many other people who never even were given the opportunity to study and obtain a higher degree, for instance, her/his parents who came to this country because higher education wasn't accesible to them and all they needed was some money to start a new life with. The kind of life that would offer them inconditional freedom and a life that would lead their children to being someone better than themselves was all they wanted but not break any laws or man-made borders. This can be the start of something new which can bring the whole country together even the world, illegal and legal citizens can rejoice and bring back the peace which mankind started off with.

Can you send me the law that states this? I am writing an opininon article on this subject and am against this like you are. Thank you