<p>"The San Mateo Community College District, on the San Francisco Peninsula, has sent a mass email announcing a scholarship for 'undocumented" students of "Chicano / Latino descent' <em>only</em>." Interesting.</p>
<p>What a great scholarship! It’s ridiculous and unfair to discriminate against good hard-working students who grew up here in the US and attended American schools. Kids have no choice in their immigration status; if their parents brought them here as undocumented aliens, that’s no reflection on the children.</p>
<p>The San Mateo Community College District isn’t sponsoring it; those are private dollars, so no whining about wasting taxpayers’ money.</p>
<p>Unless the identities of the scholarship recipients are kept confidential, it could be harmful for them, because undocumented aliens are not eligible to be legally employed anywhere in the U.S, even with a college degree. They would be admitting their undocumented status.</p>
<p>The KIDS did nothing illegal – their PARENTS did.</p>
<p>The kids are trapped. Many have no recollection of the country/society/culture their parents left, and think of themselves (rightfully so, whether legally so or not) as American. They have no ties in the other country; all of their ties are here. </p>
<p>Some of these kids see the handwriting on the wall and drop out, because they don’t see a way out of their predicament. This is giving us a whole generation of people in an underclass that have no path out of that underclass.</p>
<p>I’d much rather give them a way to become educated citizens rather than keep them uneducated illegal Americans.</p>
<p>CC’s are meant for the people who grew up in the community and PAID INCOME TAXES since that is where their funding comes from. If any CC accepts illegal immigrants, the immigrants should have to pay the OOS tuition due to the lack of their parents contributions through taxes.</p>
<p>“The KIDS did nothing illegal – their PARENTS did.”</p>
<p>Crimes of incidence have a precedent; if there is incident, there is a crime, and a criminal.</p>
<p>It is illegal for a private citizen, without authorization, to possess a key(or other measure, lol) of cocaine (or other narcotics).</p>
<p>That is the law. If your parents put that key in your possession, “Hey, honey, could you take this soft package wrapped in tinfoil over to the bodega? It’s Mr. Wallace’s challah dough…”, and you were stopped by a police officer…</p>
<p>You would go to jail.</p>
<p>(Feel free to google any and all legal precedent; it’s there.)
(The most striking example is found in any American passport; the State Dept. advises us to NEVER accept packages/materials from strangers for transport to the U.S., because ignorant or not, we’re still liable for the content!)</p>
<p>When a person commits a crime, they are a criminal.</p>
<p>The reason the crime is ignored in the U.S. is because of how common it is, and how difficult it is to respond to it.
People have grown used to a norm that isn’t reality.
The norm is that illegal immigrants are all over the place. </p>
<p>The reality is that they are committing a crime of trespass, and while they deserve due process/humane treatment (as human beings) they do not deserve to be treated like citizens, for the precise reason that they are not citizens.</p>
<p>I am appalled at some of the comments on here. I can hardly believe the ignorance. As the child of a legal immigrant, I can attest how incredibly hard it is to deal with the immigration situation for everyone. Children should NOT be held responsible for “crimes” that were commited on their behalf when they were children. Many of the “illegal” children have been here since before they could speak. They understand American culture better than any other culture, they speak the language, their family and friends are here. Most of these children are poor. Are you proposing that we ship children back to a country where they may not have any family or friends, where they may not speak the language or understand the culture, much less have the resources to establish a life for themselves? That is the most absurd thing ever. I would be completeely lost if you did this to me. And so would these illegal immigrants. Let’s face it, they are here and it would be inhumane to deport them. So, we should support them in building a successful life for themselves because in doing so we will allow them to help build a stronger America.</p>
<p>Secondly, California Community Colleges get most of their funding from the state, NOT the community. If not, they would have in-district funding like many other states’ community colleges have. As a California Community College student, I can assure you that it is very common for students to go to a community college in a district other than that where they grew up. In fact, children of “illegal” immigrants are the ones that are most likeley to be going to the community college in the district where they grew up and where their parents will, at the very least, have been paying income taxes and generating economic activity.</p>
<p>And, by the way, most illegal imigrants pay taxes and help the economy by doing jobs Americans are unwilling to do. it is a total misnomer that illegal immigrants don’t pay income taxes.</p>