<p>And the danger these kids are encountering on their way to our border! And we’re just encouraging it by letting them stay! There will be no end to it if it isn’t stopped.</p>
<p>And there are citizens in Iraq going through an awful time … I guess we should rescue them and send over some flights to bring them all here? Are we the only country in the world with such an open border policy?</p>
<p>Some of these kids too are simply trying to reunite with their parents who have been in US for 10-15 years. The kids were left behind with others when parents entered US illegally years ago…some of the parents have talked to these kids over phone over the years, sent them gifts. The undocumented parents aren’t risking going back to home country and leave US. US needs immigration reforms for example that would allow these types of parents to go back to see kids and be allowed to return to US after living here 10-15 years…then maybe kids wouldn’t be trying to sneak in like they are doing now.</p>
<p>What? If you abandon your kids to illegally enter another country and call them occasionally and send gifts you should be allowed to visit and re-enter the country after 10 - 15 years. Why? Also, at that point the kids would be nearly grown. These are little children and there is no sneaking involved. </p>
<p>Sending gifts? What does that mean - iPods? If the parents abandoned them years before, then they weren’t prioritizing their children. Why should the US prioritize them?</p>
<p>Switching gears a bit, the U.S. needs to start being more stern with the government of Mexico regarding this crisis. But the bureaucrats south of the border are too busy abusing brave people like Nestora Salgado, a naturalized American citizen (and a Native American, i.e. indigenous) whom raised a family in Seattle, but returned to Mexico on visits to help the community she grew up in by working to establish fair justice. She remains unjustly jailed with very poor treatment at the hands of the inept and corrupt government in Mexico.</p>
<p>My understanding from an insider is that the US and Mexico already have an arrangement whereby any Mexicans illegally crossing will immediately be loaded in a bus and driven back over the border, and this is being done. Which is why the current issue is with Central American, not Mexican crossers for the most part.</p>
<p>Bay, you mean they all have stellar documentation on them when they arrive? Any Mexican kid can show up without paperwork and say he’s from Honduras so he gets to stay!</p>
<p>^I don’t doubt at all that what you described may happen in real life. I was addressing LW’s comment about what is being done about illegal crossings vis-a-vis Mexico’s government. Apparently, the options are that the children must either be immediately deported, released to adult relatives in the US, or placed with foster parents. Who knows how ICE or HHS can ascertain a positive identification for any of them. It all seems futile, really.</p>
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She takes at least 1 class per semester online. This summer she is taking 7 credit hours and all are online. We’re paying full freight for these classes, which I don’t understand at all… Guess I should ask…</p>
<p>I know you can now get a Bachelor’s degree in Business completely online, and the advertised OOS tuition rate for these classes is $550/hr, which is about half of what we’re paying… Again, I suppose we should ask someone in the Bursar’s office to explain this to us… :/</p>
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<p>I understand… Except it’s not as simple as it sounds. UF’s rules for establishing residency for tuition purposes are very strict. We were told we’d not only have to move to Florida, we’d have to prove that we’ve “cut all ties” to Mississippi (whatever that means)… My understanding is it would mean selling our house here, or at the very least, giving up our homestead exemption. which would likely increase our MS property taxes by more than the cost of OOS tuition - another “gotcha.” Also UF re-evaluates residency status only once a year, in the Fall, so most people I’ve talked to said it took at least 2 years to actually make the change.</p>
<p>So it’s not that I don’t understand how to send our daughter to college for in-state tuition rates. It’s that doing so would be a giant pain in the neck, because we’d make sure we were doing it legally; every i would be dotted… </p>
<p>Our case points up an obvious inconsistency in the enforcement of the residency rules. I’m willing to bet nobody checks the illegal immigrant families to make sure they’ve “cut all ties” to their former place of residence. Doing so would be a ridiculous waste of time, right (since we already know their status)? These families are NOT legal residents of Florida, nor are we. We pay quadruple tuition. </p>
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<p>Thr illegals don’t have to “prove” anything since their transcripts show they have graduated from high schools in FL.</p>
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Point taken. I guess I was assuming this meant free tuition, via Bright Futures, Pell grants, etc, not just paying the in-state rate. </p>
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Exactly. </p>
<p>The illegals don’t have to prove anything, but the legal students on a student visa do.</p>
<p>No, Pell Grants are not available to undocumented students. They are available to green card holders and some other categories of legal immigrants. Anyone in the US on a student visa is not eligible for a Pell. The Pell Grant system is a federal program, and a change in Florida law cannot alter the eligibility rules.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if before new Fl law becomes effective quite a few undocumented immigrants were/are already paying instate tuition and receiving Fl Bright Futures scholarships at Fl public colleges. FAFSA completion is not required now for state stuff and probably no social security number is needed in Florida for non-federal grants and financial programs. If the individual Fl public institution’s financial aid office let things slide, the undocumented students probably received instate tuition and state scholarships and other institution and state financial aid for school.</p>
<p>I’m going to ignore the morality of entering the country undocumented out of this, do to the fact that there is a three year high school requirement. This means that those benefiting from this law came to the US as minors. Minors are not responsible for the actions of their parents. Even if they came to the US at 14, that is their parents choice, not theirs. Many come earlier. If someone grew up largely in the US, they are an American. They shouldn’t get that taken away because their parents broke the law.</p>
<p>We have almost this exact law right now in California, and a lot of the undocumented students I know who use it don’t even have a trace of foreign accent because they spend so much of their childhood in California. Is it really fair to them to deny that person resident tuition and funds or other aid when they grew up here, because their parents made a choice you disagree with? I say no, and that to do so is unfair and discriminatory towards innocent people.</p>
<p>No, they should go to college in the country of their citizenship, or pay as international students, just like you would do as an American kid growing up in another country where your American parents chose to live, according to the laws of that country at the time they moved there. </p>
<p>So, you take away somebody’s community or force a far disproportionate financial price on their education based on decisions they themselves are not responsible for? Tell people that they can’t be treated like other Americans even though they’ve lived here longer than any other country because their parents broke the law when they were 5? Telling that kid they have to go to university in Honduras when they don’t really know the country because they didn’t grow up there? I refuse to accept that as being at all acceptable or fair to those kids. We don’t punish kids for their parents’ behavior here in America, and that’s exactly what expecting them to leave the country or pay the international rate would be doing.</p>