The emotional testimony in Topeka last week about what the 2004 in-state tuition law is doing for some children of undocumented immigrants prompted an interesting and instructive reaction from one lawmaker: “They seem to be here to make us feel guilty,” Rep. Judy Morrison, R-Shawnee, said of those defending the tuition break. She got that right: The point of testimony by an 18-year-old Pittsburg State University student (who’s lived in Kansas for 12 years) and others among the more than 220 kids newly able to afford college was that lawmakers can’t repeal the law now without denying at least some of them the chance to further their lives. Do they really want to do that?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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41 Comments
I cannot believe people are opposed to this. It is the right thing to do to allow immigrant kids to go to college with state tution regardless of their parents immigration status.
Did you know there is a country where you cannot own land if you are not a citizen? That country denies medical care if you are not a citizen. That same country prohibits children of non-citizens to attend public schools.
That country is Mexico.
You can imagine how they are laughing their socks off.
Makes me want to cry.
I agree Joe. They are RESIDENTS and the issue of in/out tuition is RESIDENCY. Their families pay KS sales taxes and, through their rents, property taxes. They also usually pay income taxes which is withheld from their paychecks at the packing plants, etc. I am a native-born US citizen and I consider this to be a good investment in MY country’s future.
I spent a while yesterday listening to a business owner in north Wichita bitch about “all them ignorant Mexicans” that come to his store. So now we want a law to make sure “all them ignorant Mexicans” stay “ignorant?”This isn’t about taxes or state’s rights or even immigration laws. It’s about racism and xenophobia, pure and simple!
Joe W. is on the right side of this one.
Illegals pay taxes. They pay into Social Security. Their kids who’ve lived here should pay in-state tuition too.
Just because other countries treat illegals badly is no reason we should do the same.
The fact is that most costs associated with college are “fixed costs,” buildings, maintence, secretaries, computers, library books. More than 50 percent of a college’s expenses are NON TEACHING staff and facilities etc.
A few hundred or even thousand new students (illegal or not) at WSU, KU or Butler would hardly increase the cost to the college.
That one is news to me..how do illegals pay into Social Security? they don’t have SS cards, are (many times, anyway) paid in cash to avoid attention, and don’t have taxes deducted from those cash wages.
Will all of you guilt ridden lefitsts just STFU! Wetbacks have NO rights under the constitution and anyone rewarding illegals is a traitor!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Just enforce the law. Deport illegals whenever they are found.
Right on Todd !They are breaking our laws, They are breaking our laws, They are breaking our laws, Don’t you all understand, THEY ARE BREAKING OUR LAWS ! !
The story here has many sides. First, the government has chosen not to enforce certain laws. Then they decided to reward those who broke the those laws.
Personally, I though politicians only did this for the ‘political class’. Lawmakers must be mightily pleased that this discussion is about whether the illegal aliens deserve such special treatment rather than their own dereliction of duty.
Gee Ian, you sure are cranky today! What happened, somebody deface your portrait of Adolph?
As for the other comments perhaps the government should enforce the laws against the employers who benefit from all this cheap labor.
BH,
I agree with you about employer sanctions and those scumbags who knowingly hire illegal should be charged under the RICO statutes.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Yeah Ian, Let’s start with booting your sorry Cuban ass back to Fidel- he won’t have any problems dealing with you.
Jed,
I am sure that were I a low iq, drug dealing, raping, gang banging, aids infested, negro or mullato Cuban then you would just love to keep me around, right/ You guilt ridden, self hating White leftists are truly sick!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Ian,I really don’t care what your occupation, health status or ethnic heritage is; it’s your racist nazi mindset I don’t want to keep!
Raptor–
You have to have a SS number to work. Illegals use fake numbers.
They pay in and can’t get anything out.
They’re one of the reasons SS is in a little better shape than it would be otherwise.
Rapt, PL,A survey I saw several years ago concluded that illegal workers were, on average paid, and paid taxes on, competitive wages, while using fewer state services than legal workers, and were thus a benefit to the state’s economy.
Illegal immigrants are a huge, economic net drain on our nation. Illegals have also brought a crime wave, created slums, spread disease and brought a whole host of other social, cultural and racial problems to our nation! They all need to be rounded up and deported, period!
InstituteThis is the print version of http://www.claremont.org/projects/local_gov/Newsletter/crimeimmigration.html.
——————————————————————————–
Illegal Immigration and CrimeBy James R. Edwards, Jr.Posted November 22, 2004
Immigrant criminality represents perhaps the worst abuse of the liberty aliens enjoy in the United States. Increasingly, the government closest to the people either finds its hands tied or cravenly abrogates its responsibility to fellow Americans within its jurisdiction. Moreover, the illegal element exacerbates the economic and other burdens caused by legal immigration.
The current high rate of sustained, mass immigration—more than one million legal immigrants plus half a million illegal aliens every year—forces many states and localities into turmoil. The illegals certainly live outside the obligations that those who live under the “consent of the governed” owe to each other: While the principles of the Declaration of Independence guarantee all human beings certain natural and unalienable rights, only parties who have consented to our government deserve the full rights of citizenship. Illegal immigrants are not part of the social contract giving legitimacy to this government. American citizens have not given their consent to higher taxes, crowded schools, jammed emergency rooms, clogged roads, unlawful turning of single-family homes into hotels or apartments into tenements, forced multicultural amenities such as bilingual education and multilingual ballots, or welfare and other services subsidizing poverty-prone immigrants. Above all, they never consented to higher crime rates.
While anyone who decries illegal immigration is required to distinguish it from legal immigration, the effects of legal immigration should first be noted. Robert Samuelson recently wrote in his Washington Post column that “Hispanics account for most of the increase in poverty” since 1990. “Compared with 1990, there were actually 700,000 fewer non-Hispanic whites in poverty last year . . . . Meanwhile, the number of poor Hispanics is up by 3 million since 1990. The health insurance story is similar. Last year 13 million Hispanics lacked insurance. They’re 60 percent of the rise since 1990.” And of course a growing proportion of the Hispanic population is immigrants poorer than their predecessors. Samuelson remarks that the black poverty rate in this period has actually dropped, from 32 to 24 percent.
To add to Samuelson’s observations, consider the reports from the Center for Immigration Studies by its Steven Camarota and Harvard’s George Borjas detailing the negative economic impact of recent immigrants on native-born wages and employment. Illegal immigrants impose an even greater burden, because they pay few taxes and they drain public services such as health care, education, and other benefits of the welfare state. While many federal programs deny assistance to illegals, many state and local programs and privileges are open to them. The National Academy of Sciences found in a 1997 landmark study that immigrantheaded households in 1994-1995 placed a net annual fiscal burden on California native-born residents of $1,178 per native household.That is, each American family in California subsidized that state’s immigrant population by nearly $1,200 a year.
The NAS report also said fiscal impacts tend to benefit the federal government and drain state and local government resources. “Much like anyone else in the population, immigrants use services that are costly to provide, or that others can use less freely—so-called congestion costs. Examples include services from roads, sewers, police and fire departments, libraries, airports, and foreign embassies.” Therefore, having a much larger immigrant population (29 percent of the U.S. foreign-born, a fourth of the State’s population) bloats California’s budget significantly….http://www.claremont.org/projects/local_gov/Newsletter/crimeimmigration.html?FORMAT=print
Viva la Raza Blanco!!
Ian,”Illegal immigrants are a huge, economic net drain on our nation. Illegals have also brought a crime wave, created slums, spread disease and brought a whole host of other social, cultural and racial problems to our nation! They all need to be rounded up and deported, period!”Yeah, that’s just what a Native American friend of mine said!
Jed,
You don’t respond to my evidence showing how destructive non White immgration has been and you invoke the memory of the noble savage, pathetic! Just for your information, we were here first, just do a google search on Kennewick Man!
You should seek help lest your White guilt and self hate destroy you.
Viva la Raza Blanco!!
Oh my….
Most of my fellow liberal bloggers here are SO WRONG on this.
Let me get this straight. If a student from Massachusetts chooses to attend KU ( Why would he but that is not the point) said student pays a much higher OUT OF STATE tuition. But if the child of folks who violated our borders and laws, sublimated the wages of our native born workers, and continues to live and work here and send their income back to a foreign nation, well that child of said invader should pay the same as a native Kansan to attend that same KU. That is just insane!
Not only should these children of invaders not get in state tuition. They and their parents should be deported. In state tuition is just the wrong headed continuation and promotion of children ……..”anchor babies” who were only born in the first place to get their invader parents a foothold.
Not only should the in state tuition status for children of these invaders be repealed. But we need legislation to revoke the citizensip right of these anchor babies in the first place!
Ding Ding Ding…!!!
“Anchor babies”? Whoo, JR, may I suggest a switch to decaf?
I call them kids myself, and they usually don’t have a choice on where they live.
Undocumented workers do in fact pay taxes and spend in the local economy. The INS has the job of dealing with those who came here without permission, overstayed their visas or–in some instances–are still engaged in the bureaucratic process of remaining in this country.
We don’t need to deputize the rest of the government.
Jed,
Thanks for the info, I had no idea. Amazing, some worthwhile information here.
If the INS won’t do their job, the state of Kansas should step in and do it for them.
Ian,Noble savage? Don’t tell me you’re still hung up on Rousseau! That died with the moldy Victorian era.And yes, I’ve kept up on the Kennewick find, and to assume that he’s European, in any modern sense of the word, is absurd! Anyway, more recent evidence suggests that the Australians may have been here long before him.As for slums, etc., they’re a European import!
Illegal immigrants are and continue to come here because big corporations take advantage of them. Why would Wal-Mart hire an American for $6.50 an hour when they could hire an illegal Mexican for MUCH less? They can’t complain cuz they’d get deported if they did, illegals are not protected under the labor laws for fair wages like we are. All of you focus on the Mexicans like they are the chief cause of the problem, but the real problem of an invasion lies on the shoulders of those said greedy human-abusing corporations. It’s only now that they ask themselves, “where did 10 million illegals come from?” As if they are clueless! As if 10 million illegals just popped up outta the friggin ground! THEY are the ones who are responsible for this mess, not the 10 million poor Mexicans who work hard to feed their poverty-stricken families. What are you bastards talking worrying about anyway? you can feed your kids! You can feed your families! All people have a right to eat to stay alive! and thats what these Mexicans are doing! Working to feed their kids! You S.O.Bs have no idea what its like to live poor and destitute with no hope of bettering yourself! How would you feel if you had to watch your kids go hungry cuz you couldnt scrounge up a living meager enough to buy a half-sack of rice? You say “it is the law” “they must abide by our law” Is there no room for compassion in our society? Or are you self-professing Christians devoid of empathy for your fellow-men? You are hypocrites! We live in a so-called equalitarian society, where the color of a man’s skin is a factor in affecting the property value of an area! Is that a just society to you? Forget what i have said, you have your big turkey dinners to attend to! “Give me your tired, your poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These words are engraved on our precious Statue of Liberty. Sure, only if those masses are white. hypocrites.
America was founded explicitly as a homeland for White Christians, period!
Viva la Raza Blanco!!
About the time you give a tuition advantage to illegal FORIEGN nationals who NEVER paid a dime of taxes to support our American education system ….. is about the time I advocate my kids to take up residence on a sunny beach in Mexico and tune out of the rat race of paying high taxes to support irresponsible state representitives who use our money to buy their votes!
If you don’t pay to support education and health care GO HOME!
John Q Public
Oh I get it now Ian,You want Hispanics to work for America, elect officials who work against their own interests, and fight wars and die for America. But you don’t want Hispanics to LIVE IN AMERICA? That sums it up for you right there doesnt it? In your other posts you accuse people of self-hate, but you are the poster boy for that aren’t you? Why don’t you take a look in the mirror you self-hating S.O.B., you’re not exactly the “good ol’ boy” type are you? How much skin-whitening cream do apply everyday? You been working on your straight unaccented English have you? You accuse others of self-loathing, but everyone knows Ian, that the only perpetrator of that crime is you. You sir, are a shame and disgrace to all Hispanics. And it would have been better had you never been born. There is nothing more pathetic, than a man pretending to be something he is not. Oh and by the way Ian, there is only ONE Catholic Church, and it sure as hell isn’t the Kansas brand. :)
I’ve had a lifetime of getting to know people from all over the world. Since my ability to travel has been limited, I’ve relied on people who come here from other countries. Some have been legal, and some haven’t; I can’t tell the difference, and don’t care! It’s been a wonderful, enriching experience- makes hanging around with all you WASPs pretty damn boring!These people came here for a wide variety of reasons: jobs, education, travel, marriage, or just a share of the American dream. You or your ancestors did exactly the same, but now you don’t want anyone else doing it. You’ve staked out your corner of the sandbox, and don’t want anyone else to play in it! You lose a lot of fun playmates that way.
Ok Crusader toche’. I did miss the supply side that brings on the invasion. So let me clear that part up.
Under the Clinton administration, the number of employers prosecuted or fined for hiring ilegal aliens: 3
Now that is beyond pathetic, but…..
Number of employers prosecuted or fined for hiring illegals under the Bush adminstration: 0
And I do believe Mr. bush has made his view on this matter pretty clear.
“These folks come here to do jobs that Americans don’t wanna do” HOGWASH!
These folks come here to take substandard wages that further depress over all wage scales and take jobs that Americans cannot AFFORD to do.
And you are right Crusader, the empoloyers big and small are loving every minute of it.
So,let’s fine them heavily. We need something similar to the age enforcement standards and investgation that are currently used in liquor stores. A citizen reporting agency might help as well. But that is not what we are getting.
The Wichita chamber of commerce is establishing a program to help teach Spanish! You know, so the mid managers can tell their illegals what to do!
Jed? I’m glad you like meeting people from foreign lands. But there are a great many people from a great many foreign lands that come here LEGALLY. It is a hard process and it should be. And to spare the nationals of one nation that conveniently shares an unprotected border with us the same treatment that other nationals are tested by is to my way of thinking unfair.
And yes Jed most of us are the children of immigrants……….voluntary or otherwise. That is not an excuse to excuse what is going on now. Someof my ancestors came here so long ago that I can only assume that they did it in the bowels of a ship against all odds crossingthe Atlantic Ocean in the 1600’sOthers came later………and were indentured to servitude for the first 7 years after they arrived. So I don’t think it terribly unreasonable to expect people in this modern day to do something more than cross a river and agree to work cheaper than me or any other American in order to play a part in the “American Dream” that their very presence……for whatever reason is killing.
JR,If you were a poor Mexican and ya had to make a living for your family to survive, without selling drugs or prostituting your wife and daughters; would you give a damn about the “American Dream”? No. Would you give a damn about respecting laws of another country? You wouldn’t even care about your own country’s laws much less respecting the laws of a richer nation! What you would be thinking, JR, is the people on the other side of that river are fat. We on this side of the river are skinny. I want my family to be fat. These people are driven by sheer necessity. That is why they travel and are willing to die trying to cross those badlands into America. They think, naively, that if they come here, money is easy, and they too can be fat. I find the greatest irony in the fact that Americans obsess about losing wieght, while there are so many poor people out there who would risk death to be able to eat well. Now JR, I am no economist so I won’t pretend to know if illegals taking sub-standard jobs decreases overall wage rate. However, the current minimum wage is $6.50 an hour, back in the mid-90’s it was $5.50 an hour. That doesn’t look like a decrease, buddy.
“Touche” JR!Pau le vou Francais? Cie vou ple mon te non.
I’ve always liked French, but Spanish shall forever be the language of my heart.
Yes, let’s turn America into a dumping ground for the human refuse of every little failed third world pest hole, great idea!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Did I advocate for a Mexican takeover of America in any of my posts Ian? No. I didn’t. I just wanted people to show a little more empathy for the immigration problem and address a key player of this problem (aka corporate America) before nutjobs quite similar to yourself start drafting your own demented versions of a Final Solution, like your Supreme Commander Adolf did to 6 million Jews pal. But that would entail people like yourself to rise above their shortsighted racial/cultural chauvinism, which you have proven time and again, that you are incapable of! Besides Ian, why worry about Mexicans when you’ve got us Roman Catholic Jew Yorkers to worry about? :)
Ian,”Yes, let’s turn America into a dumping ground for the human refuse of every little failed third world pest hole, great idea!”Hey Marielito, if you followed your own ideals, you’d still be in Cuba, and we’d be better off!
JR,Yes, and some of mine came as slaves, kidnapped from Ireland and sold here in colonial times. Others came here fleeing the potato famine. I’m sure glad we didn’t have our impossibly restrictive and xenophobic immigration laws back then! Many, if not most of our ancestors wouldn’t have qualified.I’ve known a few “illegals,” most from Mexico, and they were just as good people as the “legal” ones. What we need is a major overhaul or elimination of our immigration laws.
12 million illegals. If granted amnesty they qualify to bring in their families from Mexico. At 1 wife and 1 kid (yeah right) thats 36 million. Current estimates for illegals on welfare is 37 billion dollars. 1/3 of prison population is illegals. With 36 million, what will this do to schools, welfare rolls? This is bigger disaster than Katrina. How much of money spent on illegals could have helped LEGAL citizen/victims of Katrina?
Well whoever you are tmac I am glad you “summoned the ghost” of that thread. I was even more eloquent back then.Total deportation. Now.
Frustration. Did search and found this thread. Media is portraying protests as students. But here in California is bad. If you disagree with their position you are tagged racist. Burning American flag in streets, waving Mex., Salvador, & Honduran flags. I doubt students realize the anger they are stirring up. More like Mecha and Atzlan groups taking advantage of emotions and using students for numbers. Protests past couple of days looked like Hamas protesting in Israel or Tehran. Bottles and rocks thrown at cars with American flag stickers. Signs and placards saying “Brown Power” and “We are the true owners of this land” Bizarre. And of course the throngs of apologists. “They are just misunderstood”, ” They are hard working families” I am sure many are but that is also a stereotype. Many are gangsters, criminals, many claim the Southwest as belonging to Mexico. I am losing faith in any damn politician either side as all I hear is lame platitudes.