I listened to the Mike Gallagher show on WBAP this morning on the way to work (only about 10 minutes, including waiting in line at the bank). Anyway, he was soliciting calls on the topic of giving in-state tuition discounts to illegal immigrants. The topic came up because a state legislator in Kansas is now trying to revoke a 2001 provision that allowed the practice (or mandated it, I’m not sure which) of giving the discounts to illegals as long as they had either a) lived in the state for some period of time or b) attended a Kansas high school for at least 3 years.
Anyway, Gallagher’s position is that the law is the law is the law, and we shouldn’t be rewarding people for breaking the law, and especially not by giving them priveledges that many, many American citizens don’t get.
One caller, a bleeding-heart liberal pagan (she actually said she was a practicing pagan), wanted to argue that “they’re already here. Why don’t we educate them and make them productive members of society?” She also thought that all education should be free.
Another caller, an immigrant from Honduras (I think…I didn’t catch all of what he said) argued that if we allow the illegals to attend high school, we ought to let them attend universities and give them in-state tuition.
Another caller made a good point: if one of the primary arguments against enforcing immigration laws and/or restricting further immigration is that our economy depends on illegal immigrants doing jobs that Americans won’t do, then why do they need college educations?
The last caller was the only one that I thought made any sense (albeit, you can’t really tie a generalized argument made by lots of people to a specific policy made by people who may or may not have been arguing the above). One thing that struck me as particularly salient is that the purpose of giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants isn’t:
- that we want them to have a college education because we care. If that were the case, then we would be offering the discounts to Americans.
- It’s not to acheive some fiscal goal, because it’s definitely a money-loser to the state.
- It’s also not a cynical attempt to “buy” votes on the part of Kansas lawmakers – illegals can’t vote, and hispanics don’t vote in very large numbers even in the general election, nevermind the local elections.
No, the reason is because the state doesn’t want to deal with INS (…er, USCIS) or enforcement, or investigating backgrounds, etc, etc. They don’t want to get caught with their pants down if the federal government ever cracks down on illegals in various ways. All the illegals who applied to be admitted to a university will have their background checked for residency. The university doesn’t want to have to differentiate between “legal” and “illegal” so that when the feds come knocking, they can just say “gee, officer, I didn’t know”.