As for the excuse that this is a residency requirement: PUH-LEAZE. These aren't residents; they're squatters. A bad court decision doesn't justify a bad decision made by the polity.
As for this especially idiotic remark:
We're in the fight which is more than I can so about the majority of Americans who think the problem is "a bunch of Mexicans are stealing their lawn mowing jobs" and contribute by bitching about Rick Perry.
You haven't been paying attention on FR very long if you think this is the problem, or even the perception of the problem by any serious conservative. Illegals are a net drain on our entire economy, and they are causing an enormous distortion of our political process and institutions.
Given the demographics of leftards, if there were no illegals in the US, or if they had been dealt with properly in 1986, the country would be far to the right of where it is today, and in ten years the Democrat Party would be relegated to (just barely) New England-only status. We are allowing leftists to import millions of left-wing voters whose political history has transformed a country rich in national resources and free of many of the pedestrian obligations of advanced nations by the prosperity of its superpower neighbor into a Third World shiitehole.
Given its natural endowments, there is simply NO excuse for the status of Mexico. This is Colombia on our southern border, and its people continue to elect the same commies and criminals generation after generation. They are and will do the same thing here. Texas is a big state, so maybe you haven't been to Pecos or El Paso lately, but I have. FYI: that isn't really part of "Texas" any more. I've also done work in Northern Mexico, and I see very little difference North or South of the Rio Grande.
No one concerned about this issue thinks the problem is Mexican gardeners. Get a clue.
I didn't say it was the conservative perception, but clearly it is the majority of Americans' because if they had a clue what was happening at our border there would be people with pitch forks and torches at the White House and Congress. And yeah, I know the border, I own property close to Zapata. I know the border and I know what we're dealing with here and the issue isn't school tuition. There is a civil war on our border and the people flooding across it are running for their lives. If this was happening anywhere else in the world there would be UN refugee camps set up but instead we've got Democrats that hope to make them voters and Republicans scared to death that the Left will succeed and don't want to offend them. But Perry isn't one of them, he is fighting the border war and your using one small issue that happened 10 years ago before 9/11 to frame his entire position on immigration. The intent of that law was to let children who are eligible to become legal residence who grew up in Texas be able to finish school without having to wait for the USCIS to finally get around to changing their status, not to let ever person who swam across the Rio Grande to get into college because that wouldn't benefit them and it wouldn't benefit Texas.What Perry said was stupid, he should have been prepared to defend it, his mistake was thinking that people actually understood the law and the intent of the law and for that he should be slapped, but calling him limp on immigration and on the border is just not true.