It is not the state’s job to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That responsibility is constitutionally assigned to the federal government, and no state can deport people.
That is a straw man that you're knocking down. I never said that states had the authority to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. Here is what I said:
The federal government should stop meddling in state affairs and let states pass heavy fines on employers that hire them.
Do you have a problem with this? The Justice Department has sued certain states that have tried to crack down on employers hiring illegals. Surely you wouldn't disagree with the proposition that a state has a right to fine employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. That is certainly the position consistent with the Tenth Amendment.
So to the degree you in one state pay for illegals in another state, the fact that they are in the state is the federal government’s fault. And the fact that you have to pay illegal’s medicare and medicaid is also the federal government’s fault. And the fact you have to educate them in public schools is the federal government’s fault (well, the courts, but same thing).
I agree that the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to enforce our immigration laws and I have said as much. I agree that the fact that we have to pay for illegals Medicaid (I don't know of any illegal that collects Medicare) is also the fault of the feds. Same goes for public schools (Plyer v. Doe). Brennan's footnote from that decision gave us birthright citizenship for the children of illegals.
A state granting in-state tuition to illegals does not cost any state but the state that does it. They are state schools, and the state runs them and pays for them, and if they want to allow illegals to attend and pay cheap rates, it is the taxpayers of that state who bear the burden.
I could make the argument that it actually costs all of us money, because 99.9% of all colleges and college systems in this country receive federal financial aid and student loans to pay for students that attend the schools, and the institutions definitely factor these account receivables into their decisions on where to set tuition for a given year. Although illegal immigrants are ineligible for federal financial aid, the tuition is set at the same rate for every in-state student, so the illegal immigrants still benefit from the lower state tuition that is subsidized by the federal tuition aid dollars, no matter what department the college spends them in. In this regard, states with almost no illegals enrolled as college students (states without in-state tuition rates for illegals) subsidize the states with more illegals enrolled as college students.
Just as if a state wants to give out more welfare, or run more programs for the unemployed, that’s their business, or should be. What a state decides to do with it’s money is up to the residents of the state.
This is a different scenario from the ones mentioned above because illegals are not eligible for welfare or for unemployment insurance (although apparently some illegals still collect unemployment insurance despite this prohibition).
And no matter who we elect, and how much we complain, there will be a point, somewhere down the road, where children of illegals who grew up here will end up getting legal residence of some sort (at best, we can hope for a non-citizen version where they have to apply and wait in line. When you put to the american people the question “If a child has spent his entire formative live in the united states, and has no knowledge or connection to his “country of origin”, and that child has attended and graduated our schools, and attended and graduated our colleges, and is trained to be an effective member of society, should we deport them, or give them green cards?”, the overwhelming majority is going to be for letting them stay.
I completely agree with you. Amnesty is inevitable as more and more children are born to illegal aliens. They will turn 18 and be able to vote, and they will vote for representatives who support amnesty for the voters' brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. I don't share your optimism that they will get some type of non-citizen pathway. They will get the full enchilada (not trying to sound racist, but it's just the first thing that popped into my head). There will be a small fine (under $2,000, most likely, which will probably be payable over a 10-year period), a 2-year wait for a green card, and then U.S. citizenship after 5 years. It will be a real smack in the face to the tens of millions of people who would love to get into this country, many of whom would contribute far more in productivity than the illegals who we currently have.
People do NOT associate the problem of illegals with kids who speak english, are ingrained into our culture, and have college degrees. It won’t be a “dream act”, but there will be allowances. This isn’t going to happen soon, but no amount of you and I complaining is going to stop it.
I think it will happen by 2025. I don't think it will happen as long as Republicans control at least one House of Congress houses or the presidency, but demographic changes are going to simply overwhelm the opponents of illegal immigration.
I do agree with you that allowing them to attend college at all, much less more cheaply, is simply moving the problem down the road, because as you said how would they get a job?
Yep, this is precisely my point. Why grant them college degrees when they cannot use it to get a better-paying job? The only reason to do it is with the expectation that we will eventually grant them amnesty, and that is what makes it disgusting. Take Texas, for example. UT Austin is a great school. Illegal immigrants there are taking spots from presumably qualified Texas legal residents and legal non-residents, and if that wasn't bad enough, they aren't even able to use that degree after they graduate. This doesn't benefit the state of Texas at all because they are subsidizing the in-state tuition with the expectation that the person will graduate and get a JOB, and not a job washing dishes (nothing wrong with washing dishes, but you don't need a college degree for it), but a job in engineering or computer science or teaching.
Except I guess if the do well, and have a useful degree, and then simply go back home and apply for a visa, they will probably get a work visa through one of our skilled worker immigration programs.
Except for the fact that a lot of the news articles I've seen on these stellar illegal immigrant students never mention the important facts. The articles always seem to mention their high school GPA but they never mention their SAT scores, probably because they aren't that stellar. Most of the articles that I can remember reading that dealt with this issue involved illegal students earning degrees in majors like political science or history (or worse, [insert ethnic group] studies). We have absolutely no need for people with these degrees in the current economy with a 9.1% unemployment rate. We didn't even have a need for them with a 6% unemployment rate, so that's a sunk cost.
You are definitely on the right track. These illegal aliens don't want immmigration laws enforced. These kids are marxists. They hate America. It's a sad commentary about conservatism that so many Freepers neither know what illegal means or have any idea what the "rule of law" means.
I agree that the feds should allow states to do more — but that would have to start with a federal law of course, because they have the immigration responsibility.
On the other hand, I don’t think states should have to use their own money to handle illegal immigrants, because that IS a federal government function, and border state residents shouldn’t bear the brunt of the costs of handling the federal failure to control the border.