Before starting, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Rick Perry was terrible in the recent debate. On the question of offering in state tuition rates to the children of illegal aliens who live in the State of Texas and attend high school in Texas for at least 3 years, his answer was about as bad as you can get. The essence of it was if you opposed his plan, you have no heart. This is regrettable, especially when you consider the idea is a lot more sensible than you might originally think.
There is another obvious point that must be established before we continue. In Plyler vs. Doe, the Supreme Court mandated that states must provide education for the children of illegal immigrants for K-12. Essentially, those children were not independent moral agents in the decision to enter this country illegally. To deny them education in the public schooling system would be to punish them for something they have no control over. That is neither fair nor just, so the Courts reached this decision.
The state of Texas decided that when it comes to determining college tuition rates, residents of Texas would be counted as residents of Texas, as National Review’s Kevin Williamson remarked. The caveats being that:
-The student must have lived in Texas for at least 3 years prior to graduation
-The student must have a high school diploma
-The student must sign an affidavit that they are either seeking permanent resident status or will do so as soon as they are able to.
According to a 2010 report in the Dallas/Forth Worth Morning News, this effects a whopping one percent of Texas college students. For a simple comparison, the top 5 Texas Universities have about 190,000 students. This would mean 1900 benefit. Since the law passed in 2001, 22,697 students benefitted from the bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate and with only 4 objections in the Texas house. There are millions of people living illegally in Texas. We are dealing with an incredibly small data set here. I point this out only to tell my conservative friends who disagree with the issue: from a pure political and optical standpoint, this is not the hill to die on.
From a policy standpoint, the influence this has on immigration overall is pretty insignificant. Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum stated that this acted as a magnet towards increasing illegal immigration. Yet one percent of college students are involved in this discussion. What they are saying is that a starving immigrant family from Mexico who can’t survive subsistence wise in Mexico is going to come to America because 10-15 years down the line (at the very least 3 years, but considering the logistics of moving an entire family with teenagers, this is tougher), so their child can save 25% and still have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college. I submit that if most of these families were able to focus a lot of time on long-term problems, they wouldn’t be trying to flee their country.
Furthermore, one can hold the position I do and not sit on the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board favoring open borders. One can favor enhanced crackdowns on those illegal aliens currently in America by going after those who exploit them in their jobs. You can implement things like E-Verify. You can even increase border security. These things actually have an impact on immigration levels. The tuition rates of one percent of Texas college students do not.
The political aspects aside, there is a humanitarian issue. All of these children participating in the program were minors when they were taken to this country illegally by their parents. As they were minors (most of these very young), they weren’t free to make their own decision. When one cannot make an independent decision of their own, they cannot be held liable for a crime. If they cannot be held liable, they cannot be punished. They are indeed being punished.
Two children go to school together from the first grade, grow up together and become best friends. They play on the same sports team together. They have the same teachers. They compete for the heart of the same girl. They both get accepted into the same college. Yet one has to pay more. The reason? When he was three years old, his parents decided to cross the border illegally. As such he faces a punishment for something committed before he even reached the age of reason. Such a scenario is neither just nor fair.
To make this into an issue upon which we decide our nominee for President is absurd. While some may believe this to be mere “pandering to Hispanics”, let us give this further thought. Republicans would be going out of their way to sink someone’s candidacy over something that affects one percent of one state’s students, and those students aren’t even responsible for that action. You want to try and defend that come November 2012?
Conservatives need to get serious.
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