Thanks for this information. It merits further investigation as to context and applicability, but if it is as it appears, then it's going to bite Perry big-time if his opponents choose to use it, not to mention leaving the state of Texas wide-open to law suits.
Legal and political considerations aside, the law reflects and codifies the inherent moral and ethical hypocrisy of the Texas law.
Charles, your post #112 really pegged the sophistry alert meter hard to the right. Your pretzel-logic efforts at misdirection are usually more clever and plausible. You're slipping a bit.
Also, sometimes people ask how the texas law (and other state laws) can have a provision that requires the children to be seeking to legalize their status, when illegals “can’t do that”. But the fact is that a minor who is illegal on the basis of their parents action CAN apply for legal status, and their illegal residence is not held against them (because they are minors, and therefore had no control over their illegal status).
If these illegal minors apply for residency when they become adults, their requests are considered as if they were any other alien seeking to enter the United States.
The argument for that treatment is clear — they couldn’t themselves go back to their “home country” to apply legally, so it makes no sense to treat them as if they could have.
The argument AGAINST that treatment is that it gives incentives to the PARENTS to be here illegally, in order to help their child get legal status. However, that is only the case if there is an indication that children in the country illegally applying for legal status get preferential treatment in consideration because they are already here.
If it wasn’t for the problem of incentivizing people to commit illegal acts, I would say that to the degree we are going to have immigrants, I would prefer 18-year-olds who grew up in our culture, over 20-year-olds who can’t hold a job in their own country and so they come here to take our jobs but ignore our culture.
But that’s an argument that is outside the scope of the discussion at hand, illegals getting college tuition (which I oppose, but support the rights of other state residents to do what they want with their own money).
Note that a state deciding to give in-state tuition to children of illegals does NOT do anything to help the illegals stay in-country. That’s the federal government’s job, to deport them, and if they aren’t being deported, if a state decides it’s better to have the illegals at college learning something useful, rather than hanging out on street corners causing trouble, that’s up to the residents of that state.