Posted on 09/24/2011 4:40:14 AM PDT by iowamark
ORLANDO, Fla. — Rick Perry went out on a limb Thursday by refusing to back off his support as Texas governor for granting in-state tuition to some of the children of illegal immigrants, and painting critics of the law as heartless — remarks that landed him in the crosshairs of his GOP rivals.
The three-term Texas governor said he still supports the program "greatly" and that the Lone Star State needs "to be educating these children because otherwise they’ll "become a drag on society."
"If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," Mr. Perry said.
The stance also put Mr. Perry at odds with a chunk of the audience, which booed, and opened him up to attacks from the Republican field, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who said the law carries an annual price tag of $22,000 per student and acts as a magnet for illegal immigrants.
"If you're a United States citizen from any one of the other 49 states, you have to pay $100,000 more," Mr. Romney said, alluding to the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at the University of Texas over four years. "That doesn't make sense to me. That kind of magnet draws people into this country to get that education, to get the $100,000 break. It makes no sense."
Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania piled on the criticism and called Mr. Perry "soft on illegal immigration" and alluded to a Perry speech from 2001 at which the Texan extolled the virtue of studying a "binational health insurance" program between border areas of Texas and Mexico...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
It didn’t matter if Perry vetoed the bill.It passed in the legislature with enough votes to be overridden if Perry did veto it.It was a catch 22 situation. Damned if you do,damned if you don’t.
Perry amply demonstrated where his loyalties lie......his comments in two debates make it clear that if we, as United States citizens, do not agree with his pandering to foreign governments, we are heartless racists.
Perry has spent most of his political career pandering to ILLEGAL aliens...... handing out govt freebies, enticing hordes of them over the border, looking away as the savage Zetas cartels setup drug operations in Dallas, sucking up to Mexico, etc, etc, etc.
Now, keep in mind, a rank political opportunist like Perry does not lift his little finger unless he gets a payoff.
Heck, I'd guess there's "hundreds of millions" of reasons why Perry would thumb his nose at his own country and its citizens.
Critics of Rick Perry are inferring that illegal immigrants get a ‘free college education’.
Doesn’t this program simply state that a ‘resident’ of Texas gets a lower rate than a student whose family resides in another State?
Distortion?
It is not about the BILL.
It is about Rick Perry’s openly declared
pro-illegal immigration
attitude and his wanting US TAXPAYERS to pay
their way.
I’m done with him. It’s over, he can get lost and quit wasting our time.
Herman Cain is the only one up there offering solutions, not political feel good pandering......
Most of these children have been taught in Texas (Or in other states) schools for years. Some ent through Elementary, Middle and High school, at a cost of thousands of dollars already.
They have a basic education, through High School at the expense of citizens—taxpaying citizens.
They should thank us for that,instead we are heartless if we do not want to send them to college at In-state tuition rates.
Many of these heartless people, myself included, cannot afford to send our own kids to college, but now we are expected to college educate someone else’s kid who does not belong in this country at all.A basic qualification for in-state college funds should be that those who ask for them apply for American citizenship.Especially since they have been sucking off the American taxpayer for years to start with.
If they do not wish to become Americans thay should go the fudge back to where they do want to belong, and stop sucking off us.
IIRC, in-state status requires you to be a legal resident of the state for a year. How a legal resident of, say, Guatemala residing illegally in Texas establishes legal residency without following the law of this nation (become a citizen) is beyond me. A kid from Montana (natural born citizen) can’t get in-state tuition until he’s resided — legally — in the state for a year. But if you come from outside the country, no problem — and you’re heartless if you think otherwise. I’ve supported Perry up til that comment. I’d rather Perry than Romney, and if he gets the nomination, I’ll hold my nose and vote against Obama. But I’ll be wishing that an actual conservative would come along all the while.
It’s too bad for America that true Conservatives aren’t running for president.
Jim Demint and Jeff Flake come to mind immediately.
Is America to be stuck with a RINO Republicrat candidate yet again?
You have to have an immigration visa or be a citizen to become a resident for any purpose requiring you to be a resident.
Some things you can do without being a resident. Most recently the Supreme Court ruled that a town can restrict rentals to people lawfully in the United States ~ and that's just rentals!
Regarding Texas "in state" tuition ~ it's available for whoever the law says its available to ~ and not available to others the law says its not available to. At the moment there's litigation about some of its application. But let's examine who the law says can't get in-state tuition.
Let's say you are a taxpayer and a citizen, and you've lived in Texas all your life. You've been in college for 6 years and have not completed the course of study (you are slow, a working single mother, handicapped) but you're not repeating courses. The college can elect to CUT OFF your use of instate tuition simply because you are taking too long.
Hmmm.
I see a lot of "heart" in that one eh!
You can be cut off because you are slow paying a nonreturned book fee ~
You can be cut off because you changed your major from, for example, engineering to agronomy ~ because you want to get into serious capital intensive FISH FARMING where you will use your engineering and agricultural knowledge simultaneously. Can't let the students be creative eh ~ gots' ta' keep doin' that same ol' stuff ~ pump oil, cut cotton, do cows else they'll charge you the higher rate!
I think it would be worth your while examining this question ~ it's very easy. Just look up TEXAS IN STATE TUITION. Google.com will pop all of that right up at the start of the list of references ~ something about everybody in America looking into it.
It’s called states rights folks!
If the state of Texas wants to (by overwelming margins) give all the children who live here a break on tuition rates, then it has the right to do so.
Thank you for the facts.
IIRC conventional wisdom seems to be that Texas Governors are not as powerful as the State Legislators. Maybe why both G.W.Bush and R.Perry are both accused of, or have appeared to compromize too easily.
Disagree, but he should have said "brainless" if they couldn't understand the reasoning - if one listens to it, along with his assertion that the borders need to be controlled before States can take any really effective actions (unless they want to be sued by the folks that refuse to enforce the law).
If you listen to his reasoning to explain the position, which only had for "nays" out of 181, you might hear a realist making the best of a lousy situation - my estimation of him went up.
Thank you also.
Clearly a very serious issue with details/facts that cannot be fully discussed in 60 second debate sound bytes. I have to believe that Perry and the other candidates didn’t do as much research as you;)
“Doesn’t this program simply state that a ‘resident’ of Texas gets a lower rate than a student whose family resides in another State?”
No, it does not simply state what you said.
No, they're not.
It's very clear that the illegal immigrants are going to pay in-state tuition fees.
I've been a Perry supporter since he announced; and I had set a pretty low bar for him to justify this program. But, he couldn't justify it intellectually, he resorted to heart-tugging. He's appearing just as emotional as Michelle Bachmann and has just about lost me.
The Gardasil kerfuffle meant nothing to me, the charges of crony capitalism were cooked up and exaggerated, but a Republican president must have a better sense of how to handle illegal immigration than he does.
Barring any new entrants to the race, he can still get my vote back, but I expected far better of him in his third debate than what I saw. He made Romney appear presidential -- something I'd hoped I'd never see.
I heard him on Hannity yesterday give a full uninterupted explanation. I felt much better about it.
It didn’t matter if Perry vetoed the bill.It passed in the legislature with enough votes to be overridden if Perry did veto it.It was a catch 22 situation. Damned if you do,damned if you don’t.Those are interesting facts. I wish Perry had said that, instead of enthusiastically endorsing the tuition assistance for illegal aliens, and calling anyone who doesn't support pandering to illegal aliens "heartless".
“If the state of Texas wants to (by overwelming margins) give all the children who live here a break on tuition rates, then it has the right to do so.”
The law says nothing about “children”.
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