Posted on 06/22/2006 1:29:47 PM PDT by goalinestan
Most Utahns feel a state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition should be repealed, according to a new Salt Lake Tribune poll.
Seventy-one percent of the 625 registered voters who were interviewed by telephone for the statewide poll this week said Utah should "repeal the current state law that offers the discounted resident college tuition rate to the children of undocumented immigrants."
Ruth Bick, a 63-year-old Ogden resident, said Utahns should not have to pay taxes to subsidize a college education for undocumented students. The state's middle class already is burdened enough with big tax bills, she said.
"Taxpayers should not have to pay for illegal children to go to school here," said Bick, a poll respondent who calls herself a political independent. "I just don't know what the answer is."
Layne Barnes, a West Jordan Republican who also participated in the poll, said children of undocumented immigrants already get free assistance and a free public school education, so "they should not be rewarded for breaking the law."
"I have no sympathy for them," he said of undocumented students.
But Shane Andrews, a stay-at-home dad and poll respondent, said in-state tuition is about wanting to "make them [undocumented Utahns] better people.''
''If they can't better themselves, their only alternative is to seek more public assistance," said the 32-year-old Republican.
The 2002 Utah law grants in-state college tuition rates to undocumented students who attended a state high school for at least three years and graduated. Last year, 169 students qualified for the tuition rates under the law, state numbers show. Rep. Glenn Donnelson, R-North Ogden, has sponsored a bill for the past three years to repeal the law, but he has had no success. Still, he has said he will try again.
Philip Bernal, Salt Lake County Hispanic Democratic Caucus chairman, said the poll results on the tuition question "are not positive for education or Utah's future." Bernal, who didn't take the poll, said it's all in the wording of the question because the poll could have asked: Should Utah residents, who have attended at least three years at a state high school and graduated, be allowed to pay in-state college tuition?
There's a "misperception" statewide that the law allows undocumented students, many of whom have spent most of their education in Utah schools and cannot apply for federal financial aid, to pay less tuition, Bernal said.
"They're residents of Utah like everyone else," said Bernal, who had worked in higher education for 34 years. "It's not a benefit - it's a right they have."
In a January 2006 Tribune poll, nearly 60 percent of respondents said Utah should "repeal the state law that offers the discounted resident college tuition rate to the children of undocumented immigrants."
The statewide telephone poll by the Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. was conducted Monday and Tuesday and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Minorities make up 16 percent - Latinos 11 percent - of the state's population and 12 percent of Utahns do not speak English at home, according to the U.S. census. The poll did not ask about respondents' ethnicity.
Many Utahns also said they support building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border (56 percent); oppose a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the United States illegally (54 percent); and feel the state government should not have a public information Web site in Spanish (46 percent).
Bick said a pathway to citizenship is out of the question. A wall would give the United States "control of the border." And she doesn't want millions of state tax dollars spent on translating services into different languages.
''I hate that I have to 'Press 1' to hear English,'' Bick said. ''If they're here, they should know English.'' Barnes, a Utah Minuteman Project supporter, agreed. He went to the border in Fall 2005 with a group of Minutemen to learn more about the area and definitely supports a wall.
"I would help build it," Barnes said. He hears a lot on the news about Latinos committing crimes and blames them for Utah's unsafe streets. Barnes said he is frustrated that the employees at the fast-food burger joint in his neighborhood only speak Spanish.
"They're illegal aliens," he said. "I'm tired of being a victim."
Bernal said the wall being built on the border is not welcoming.
''It's the United States saying . . . we don't want to be neighbors,'' he said. ''If we decide later we don't like people who speak French, are we going to put a wall on [the U.S.-Canada] border?''
We're on the same page -- see my last post here.
Pardon my French, but HOW IN THE HELL does one prove that they are a child of an "undocumented immigrant"?
Yes. In Texas, it is being built by a private company, and will charge tolls. No one has to drive on it if they don't want to, as it will relieve congestion on I-35, which will still be maintained by Texas with federal highway money.
but this is one more move to bypass the unions by bringing cheap Chinese goods into the new port, they are building in Baja, and truck into middle America... by Mexican truckers vs. American Truckers...
As I understand it, American trucks will be able to go to Baja as well and pick up cargo. And Mexican trucks will have to have the same safety equipment and be inspected at the border as American trucks are now.
Sinkspur it's dangerous to make assumptions and take everything at just face value. We keep doing that to the detriment of our middle class and without a middle class this country is no better than Mexico.
Interesting that the Supremes made their imminent domain ruling around the same time this monstrosity of a highway came to light... because a whole lot of Texas ranches will meet their demise for this highway.
And you really expect that to happen and expect us to believe it will? How many Americans are going to lose their jobs over these Mexican rustbuckets that will come in and undercut them, or do you care? It's all about globalism and cheap labor isn't it and the heck with everything else. The Chris Cannon philosophy rules. Somehow I don't think that's what the Founders of this country had in mind for their posterity, do you?
They have said for several years the MExican trucks have to be inspected, yet all the trucks coming up into Arizona to deliver goods have brought with them a lot of fatal accidents due to poor equipment -- along with a whole lot of drugs.
You just have to trust them. Questioning could be considered hate speech.
What a biased poll question! The law states they would pay the same in-state tuition as any other Utahn.
I understand in state residents pay less than an out of state student would, but what a way to ask the question... to 625 Utahns!
That's all to be swept under the rug. It's the small price to be paid according to them for higher profits and stock dividends.
You're right.
I assume that the question is speaking in terms of the rate being discounted when compared to the out-of-state resident tuition rate. (Actually the in-state rate would be the base rate, and the higher out-of-state rate would be inflated off of it).
It may be a stupid question, but there aren't 2 levels of in-state tuition are there?
One for most residents and another for "special situations" as determined by some liberal quota. Since it's Utah, I'm going to assume that's not the case.
Our truckers will use the TransTexas Corridor as well, won't they? There will be more traffic, with rail alongside. I think it's smart to build many lanes. Cheaper to do it now than later.
Sinkspur it's dangerous to make assumptions and take everything at just face value.
Yeah. Let's instead build up all kinds of goofy conspiracies around a straightforward trade concept. Or, rather, let's let Jerome Corsi do it so we can all go out and buy his book and make him rich.
They will be handsomely rewarded by a private company.
Chris Cannon sued his own brother Joe Cannon, who is chairman of the State GOP, when he wanted to get out of Geneva Steel (the family owned business.)
It is my understanding he took over $60,000,000 out of the company and effectively put it into bankruptcy. He has since spent almost every last dime.
I also have been told that both Cannons dipped their fingers into the employee pension fund and left employees with nothing.
The only thing you will believe, apparently, is some wild tinfoil idea spun by a free lance writer with a lot of time on his hands.
How many Americans are going to lose their jobs over these Mexican rustbuckets that will come in and undercut them,
The Mexican trucks will not be hauling inter-US, but will only be able to haul loads across the border and to a port. (As I understand it). And the Mexican trucks will have to pass the same safety inspections as American trucks or they won't get in.
Since there are "a lot" of these fatal accidents, could you link to two or three of recent occurrence?
Nope, I've yet to make any comments anywhere on what Corsi has said. But when I see the borders not getting enforced or the laws being upheld and superhighways being built that links us with a third world basketcase, making it easier for them to import their drugs and illegal aliens then it becomes obvious that at least some of what he's saying is real and not tinfoil.
Nice people (not)...
We have most of these accidents in our area on the turn off from 93 through Laughlin due to having to bypass the Hoover Dam. It's a steeply-banked road and requires good breaks when carrying heavy loads and most of these accidents are due to faulty brakes/equipment. Our local papers and radio station report these accidents.
I hate to think what my ancestors -- who go back to Mayflower and 1700s on each side, would think of how they fought, and died, in the Revolution only to have our current leaders hand our country over without a whimper.. or what they would think of our citizens being complicit in this handover.
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