Posted on 04/07/2009 6:43:00 AM PDT by La Lydia
The Colorado Senate today narrowly rejected a bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants in-state tuition after five Democrats joined with Republicans to vote against it...Sen. Chris Romer, Denver Democrat who sponsored the bill, said it was hard for some lawmakers to support the bill in the current tough economic times....,adding that he would try to bring the legislation back next year.
The bill would have allowed any student who had attended a Colorado high school for at least three years...to attend public colleges and universities at the in-state tuition rate, regardless of their immigration status....
Republicans argued that the bill would run afoul of a 1996 federal law that prohibits illegal immigrants from getting college benefits that are not available to all U.S. citizens. However, nine other states have passed laws allowing in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, and...that practice has not been squarely decided in court....
And in an at times angry speech, Senate President Peter Groff, a Denver Democrat and one of only two blacks in the legislature, hearkened to the civil-rights era and to the country's "dark past."... Democratic Sen. Joyce Foster invoked the Holocaust and appealed to senators' compassion....
It wasn't enough. Democratic Sens. Morgan Carroll of Aurora, Jim Isgar of Hesperus, Moe Keller of Wheat Ridge, Linda Newell of Littleton and Lois Tochtrop of Thornton voted against the bill. Carroll referred reporters to a statement on her website that said she could not support the bill "in a climate where the state is cutting or eliminating over $1 billion of benefits to the people and is facing a $300 million cut to higher education..."Newell, who was elected in November by a razor-thin margin, simply said "I listened to my constituents" when asked about her vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Yay!
After the way they screwed over that Republican Senator to get this out of committee, this is great news!
“it was anything but equitable to out-of-state students who are American citizens.”
I don’t know if the law has changed since I was assigned in Colorado Springs with the Air Force, but even active-duty military had to become state residents to qualify for in-state tuition.
“I was assigned in Colorado Springs with the Air Force”
forgot to add it was the early ‘80s.
It must be getting close to election time, no?
They'll simply migrate to another State with more benefits to their liking.
sw
What irritates me is that the legislature appears only to have voted it down (and barely) because of current economic issues. How about THEY’RE ILLEGAL??!?!?!!??
Tax Ritter didn’t want this on his desk before re-election.
“Is Colorado waking up from its bad dream?”
I hope so. It’s just crazy how Colorado could have gone so blue. You’d think that Colorado Springs could strongly influence the outcome in the GOP’s favor (being the HQ of Focus on the Family and a major USAF center).
Yep, they will move fast after the 2010 elections. They know it will piss people off.
They are just using economic reasons to cover for the fact that no immigration legislation will happen until after the 2010 elections.
After that the amnesty will come so the illegals can vote Obama back in.
Texas has been letting illegals pay in-state tuition for years. But students from OK or LA have to fork over the much more expensive out-of-state tuition. We are in the vanguard of stupidity.
Wish I could say Utah had the same sense. We’ve got in-state tuition here, among other things. But what do you expect with Governor Huntsman and our two Senators (Hatch, Bennett).
It's obvious that this person didn't major in World History.
Looking back on my visits to the camps at Dachau and Flossenburg, the thought of in-state tuition for illegal aliens never crossed my mind.
How thoughtless of me!
I know. That had to be one of the stupidest things ever uttered in the Colorado Senate, and the competition is fierce there, believe me. How could even the most convoluted liberal thinking equate out-of-state tuition with gas chambers?
AH, the tough economic times, huh? How about that handy, dandy excuse dreamed up by dems who know their re-election chances would not look so hot after voting to let illegals into Colorado colleges for a song. Democrats can never do the right thing for the right reason, can they?
Glad they dumped this. What these dolts seem to miss is that there HAS to be a law suit out there just waiting...something about equal protection. If I live in Georgia and want in state tuition in another state I am going to claim it IF illegals get it for ANY reason.
There is a huge lawsuit on this very issue moving through the court system in California and so far, the Equal Protection clause, that is, the right of U.S. citizens to be treated equally with illegal immigrants, seems to be holding up.
That was SO blindingly obvious to me I could never understand how they ever got away with it and why they even had to go to court over it.
At a stretch - and I AM stretching it - short of deporting these hapless offspring, if they aren't, the they should be offered out-of-state tuition and put at the end of the list of other out-of-staters. I don't think that will happen because it's a tacit admission that they don't belong here.
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