According to a wire story today that has been widely front-page on
"mainstream" dailies across America, an estimated 50,000 illegal
aliens currently are in colleges in America. They correspond, of
course, to the 50,000 American kids kept out of American colleges so
that number of illegals could attend - as freshman admission slots are
a very-finite, very-scarce resource.
Being a college student hardly fills Bush's prattle that illegal
aliens are "needed" to fill "jobs no Americans will take"; the well-
known fact is that American kids not only are willing to be college
freshmen - but so eager to be that they are eager to go deep into debt
on student loans to do it.
Estimating the number of illegal aliens in American colleges
accurately is very easy; since they lack the Social Security numbers
most colleges use as student-identification numbers, colleges
typically make up such numbers for illegal aliens - with invalid first
three digit blocks. One state college here in North Carolina, for
instance, used "999" as the first three digits of the student
identification numbers it made up for illegal aliens lacking Social
Security numbers to use.
The wire story reports that the Senate's amnesty deal plans on fast-
tracking these illegal aliens who are college students for green
cards. This is despite the obvious fact that they aren't even
arguably "needed" to fill "jobs no Americans will take" - and that, in
their current illegal-alien status, they are being wastefully given
college degrees that they won't be able to use to get college-level
jobs in America when they graduate, because illegal aliens just can't
get jobs legitimately.
Get angry, parents and high-school students of America. The kid
being kept out of college so that an illegal alien can attend may be
your kid - or you. Then call a talk show tomorrow morning - and fax
your congresscritter - about this.
From Associated Press, today:
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WASHINGTON - At 23, Mariana should be carefree. She is finishing up
her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles,
and has been accepted to a master's program at Harvard University's
education school.
But life is not so simple for Mariana, who insisted that only her
first name be published because she is illegally in the United States
and worries she could be deported to Guatemala, where she was born.
"I'm even afraid of eating an apple in the library because I'm afraid
of getting caught," she said.
Mariana also worries about how she will pay her tuition and what kind
of work she will get after she completes school. "What happens next?
Without a work permit, how do you exercise your degree?" she said
during a recent interview.
Mariana is among an estimated 50,000 undocumented students in U.S.
colleges today. These students would be among the people who would
benefit from a part of an immigration bill that the Senate plans to
resume work on this week.
Children born in the United States to undocumented parents are granted
citizenship automatically. A section of the new legislation deals with
illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. They would gain
temporary legal status when they graduate from high school as long as
they agreed to enroll in college or enlist in the military.
They would be put on a fast, three-year path toward getting their
permanent resident status and their green cards. While waiting for
that, the students would be eligible for federal student loans and
could work legally - options not available to them now.
The overall bill would help roughly 12 million illegal immigrants. For
most, it would take a minimum of eight years to get a green card. The
larger group also would have to pay fines that would not be imposed on
the high-school graduates who came to the U.S. as kids.
In all, about 1 million people now in the country illegally could
potentially benefit from the provision aimed at children. Those
include students currently in elementary and secondary schools.
Current law allows children in the U.S. illegally to get a free K-12
education. They can go to most colleges if they can pay their way.
The immigrants who would benefit from the provision must have been age
15 or younger when they were brought to the U.S. and must have arrived
before January of this year. People older than 30 when the law is
enacted would not benefit.
While the bill is the subject of widespread debate, the provision
addressing students is popular. Advocates say they will try to add it
to other bills moving through Congress if the immigration legislation
does not pass.
"I'm going to look for every chance I can find to make this the law,"
said Sen. ***** Durbin, D-Ill., a chief supporter of the idea.
"What we're saying is these kids deserve a chance," he said. "They
didn't decide to come to America. Their parents did."
One of the most vocal student advocates is Marie Gonzalez, a 21-year-
old junior at Westminster College in Missouri. She has made numerous
trips to Washington to tell her story.
Her parents were deported to Costa Rica two years ago. Gonzalez, whose
deportation was deferred, said she could be sent back next year.
She said saying goodbye to her parents was awful. "There's no words to
describe it. It's been absolutely terrible. I'm an only child. They're
my best friends," she said.
But she said she cannot contemplate departing the United States for
Costa Rica, a country she left when she was 5. "I've thought about
visiting, but not going back to live there," she said. "That would be
like a crashing of my dreams."
Student advocates say many of their peers drop out of high school
because illegal immigrants typically only get jobs for low-skilled
workers.
But the provision is motivating some students to stick with their
studies, said Tam Tran, 24, who just graduated from UCLA.
"The idea that it might pass someday - that they might be able to use
their college degree to get a job - that drives people," said Tran,
who was born in Germany to Vietnamese refugees.
Neither Germany nor Vietnam recognizes her as a citizen, so she
considers herself stateless in some ways and a typical American in
others, Tran said.
She said she tries not to dwell on her status and that of many of her
friends.
"It's like a form of rejection," she said. "We can't fully participate
in what we have worked hard to become a part of."
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