<p>“It is not true for about 1/3 of UCB (and maybe other UCs) students who pay no tuition at all. They are not expected to bear any of the cost.”</p>
<p>Is there a link where I can read about this?</p>
<p>tptshorty stated that the “illegal aliens who are receiving in-state tuition are actually undocumented students who graduate from public high schools…What would you prefer these students do? Go to college or join gangs?.. Have a future?..Or would you rather they roam the streets? I can’t imagine that we want to be the kind of country where these kids sell chiclets on street corners rather than go to school…”</p>
<p>The undocumented students have already been given a tremendous gift of a free and equal education from kindergarten through 12th grade. They have been given free emergency medical care, and emergency medicaid. </p>
<p>In my own state, the state dismantled a longstanding scholarship for very high achieving state residents attending in-state schools, while deciding to offer instate tuition to undocumented students. The estimated costs of the Dream program outweighed the cost of the scholarship program. The Dream program isn’t unreasonable at all, but the juxtaposition of the two programs, with the appearance of one supplanting the other, has left a pretty bad taste in the mouths of many state residents.</p>
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<p>Yes, here it is:</p>
<p>[UC</a> Berkeley Financial Aid Office: Undergraduates » Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan](<a href=“http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/undergraduates/blueandgold.htm]UC”>http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/undergraduates/blueandgold.htm)</p>
<p>Thanks. I am happy to read that grants and scholarships are available for tuition.</p>
<p>To everybody including undocumented.</p>
<p>I do pay taxes and I also pay full fare for my D at a UC. And I will just reiterate that most of these undocumented students we are talking about are children who were brought here unwillingly and unwittingly by their parents. Some of you would prefer that they do nothing with their lives (not even go to elementary school), or be shipped back to a country where they did not grow up and maybe have no family (and maybe not even speak the language fluently) rather than try to become productive members of this society. I feel they are a tiny part of the much bigger economic problems of this state, some of which is the unequal tax burden that started with Prop 13. We could start by eliminating the death penalty, or by releasing near-death prisoners, rather than penalizing unfortunate young people who want a future.
I pay taxes and that’s how I feel.</p>
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<p>tpshorty,
AB 131 makes any student eligible for public FA, if s/he has graduated from a CA high school after 3 years of attendance. There are illegal immigrant students from Asia who come here in 10th grade (some in group housing), specifically to attend UCs at in-state rates, and now they are eligible for tax-payer funded FA. Do you also support CA tax-payer FA for them as well?</p>
<p>The parents who intentionally broke the law are being rewarded. They not only get cheaper in state tuition, but now they are being helped in paying. This becomes yet another incentive sneak across the border or to intentionally overstay the visa. Those who enter legally must feel like schmucks for doing things the legal way.</p>
<p>the next cry of those who broke the law will be: I have a college degree and I cannot get a job because I am illegal.</p>
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<p>Paying taxes is not required in order to be eligible for public FA, so I don’t know why you bring this up. Anyone who sets foot in CA and buys something pays CA taxes. Should they get CA tax-payer funded FA, too? That would make all OOS’s eligible.</p>
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<p>If they spent their entire lives in CA and paid CA sales tax on every good they purchased, perhaps yes?</p>
<p>But moreover, illegal immigrants pay state income taxes as well. They are not distinguishable, tax-wise, from legal immigrants. There is no financial argument to be made here, only a punitive argument on the nature of their parents’ illegal entry.</p>
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<p>True. So then why is it the state’s responsibility to take care of these illegal aliens?</p>
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<p>I have NEVER bought that claim. How can these kids communicate with their parents if they do not know their parents’ language?</p>
<p>“There are illegal immigrant students from Asia who come here in 10th grade (some in group housing), specifically to attend UCs at in-state rates, and now they are eligible for tax-payer funded FA.”</p>
<p>Sept 2, 2011- “The state Assembly voted today to send Gov. Jerry Brown a bill that allows undocumented immigrant college students to receive publicly-funded financial aid.”</p>
<p>The Governor hasn’t signed the bill yet; it just cleared the Assembly. So these Asian illegal immigrant students who have been here since 10th grade to get the free UC tuition are kinda jumping the gun, aren’t they?</p>
<p>Read more: [Capitol</a> Alert: California Assembly approves student aid for illegal immigrants](<a href=“http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/09/assembly-sends-dream-act-to-go.html#ixzz1Wq1Oi1iV]Capitol”>http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/09/assembly-sends-dream-act-to-go.html#ixzz1Wq1Oi1iV)</p>
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<p>Perhaps the parents speak English at home with the hopes of Americanizing their kids a bit? I’m friends with a number of people whose parents immigrated to the US later in their life and they’re unable to speak the family’s native language.</p>
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<p>Your point is well-taken. I know from experience that for second-generation Americans of Chinese descent, a good number do not even have oral understanding of a Chinese dialect (i.e. ability to understand what is spoken but an inability to reply other than in English). That is because of what you suggested: their parents wanted to Americanize their kids as much as possible.</p>
<p>But to raise your children this way requires that you are reasonably fluent in English to begin with. How true is that for the illegal aliens who are here because our border is “porous,” to quote xiggi, and who bring their children with them?</p>
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<p>Not at all. They saved themselves about $80,000 by becoming eligible for in-state rates.</p>
<p>Bay, do you honestly believe that four or five years ago these Asian or Hispanic parents looked into a crystal ball and decided to move their kids here on the off chance that the future Governor of California (it was Schwarzeneggar at the time) would sign legislation giving their illegal children in-state tuition? They did all this, move their children here, leave their families, leave their countries, just on the off-chance they might get in-state tuition?</p>
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<p>You don’t deport the undocumented student, you deport the entire family.</p>
<p>In the case of Mexico, where the majority of illegal immigrants are from, the goal should be helping create a country that offers a comparable standard of living to that of the United States. This can be done through securing the border and having a true open trade agreement which would be mutually beneficial.</p>
<p>Mexico may even develop universities as good as ours.</p>
<p>However, this doesn’t happen if the best, brightest, and most productive citizens of Mexico continue to illegally immigrate to the U.S.
S: <a href=“http://youtu.be/LPjzfGChGlE[/url]”>http://youtu.be/LPjzfGChGlE</a></p>
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<p>Well, the very same thing could be said about practically every legal American. With the exception of the tiny fraction of college confidential participants who actually personally underwent the naturalization process, all of us could be said to have enjoyed the tremendous gift of a free and equal education from K-12 simply by virtue of having done nothing except luckily winning the ‘birth lottery’ of being born as an American or to illegal immigrant parents in the US. Let’s face it: there’s nothing “meritocratic” whatsoever about winning the birth lottery and enjoying that gift of a free K-12 education. You could argue that your parents paid for that education, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that you personally did nothing to pay for it; it was provided to you as a free gift. Some children who are actually more talented and harder working than any of us but who just happened to suffer the tragic luck of being born in, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, won’t even be given a chance to succeed. Each and every one of them would love to trade places with any of us. </p>
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<p>Sure, they broke the law. But only because the law is specifically directed at them and them only, as they simply didn’t have the good fortune of being born as Americans in the first place. On the other hand, those people who did absolutely nothing in their entire lives other than simply win the birth lottery of being born as Americans are able to enjoy all of those benefits and much more, while doing nothing to earn the privilege. </p>
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<p>Actually, if anybody should feel like schmucks, it would be the immigrants (both legal and illegal) who have to endure the harrowing process of immigration while those who were simply lucky to be born as Americans don’t have to do so much as lift a finger.</p>
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Actually, the latter is a deliberately pejorative way of describing the former. The term “illegal” is used deliberately to brand the kids as criminals.</p>
<p>I don’t consider a kid who was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was a child to be a criminal, so I won’t call him “illegal.” I think that’s rude, condescending, spiteful and self-righteous. If you refer to him as “undocumented” everyone will know what you mean and you will have avoided being needlessly belligerent. Okay?</p>
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I agree. But are you not aware that the students who are eligible for this are “regular tax-paying lower middle to middle class families/kids”? Who do you think these high-performing California high school graduates are? Junkies bussed in from Tijuana? They are the children of families who have been working and paying taxes in this state for years.</p>
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<p>By the same token, I am sure there are plenty of non-Californians (but still Americans) who move to the state while their children are in the 10th grade in order to be eligible for in-state UC tuition. Heck, some of them may never even work, but immediately invoke welfare while they live in the state. Yet the California taxpayers are still supporting them and their children.</p>
<p>This all gets back to my fundamental question: why do we automatically assume that every American deserves taxpayer support just because they had the luck to be born American?</p>