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Another Reason Why the DREAM Act is Really Bad Policy

April 4, 2012 By Steve Young 20 Comments

Student protesters tried to storm a trustees meeting and were met with force by campus police. Many of the students were pepper-sprayed during the altercation. This was the scene that transpired last night at Santa Monica College where students demonstrated their anger towards the university’s plans to offer courses at four times the current cost by shouting “No cuts, no fees, education should be free.”

When public universities are forced to raise tuition, outraged students, particularly in places like California, are letting many politicians and legislators off the hook.

Faced with an oncoming ‘bubble’ over loans and seeing valuable funding resources being directed to ‘bogus’ offices and departments, students should be asking tough questions of their representatives in their state capitols.

Even with tuition costs rising dramatically, Governor Brown and the California legislature passed and signed a DREAM Act in their state back in October of 2011. The California DREAM Act now provides in-state tuition rates and makes financial resources available to students who are in the state illegally. The money to cover the difference had to come from somewhere and the Governor and legislature figured that California students could, and should, bear the brunt of it. Governor Brown and politicians who supported the DREAM Act put illegal aliens ahead of the needs of its own citizens.

But California is not the only state that puts its taxpayers on the hook for subsidizing the post-secondary education of illegal alien. A number of other states (Illinois, Texas, Maryland, Washington, Wisconsin, just to name a few) allow illegal aliens access to in-state tuition rates, and a number of other states are considering this legislation. California, due to its large illegal alien population and its massive budget deficit (coincidence anyone?), is the first state to manifest the inevitable ill effects of this policy. The remainder of the states should pay particular close attention to what is happening in California.

Any student (or taxpayer for that matter) protesting out of control tuition rates in California and elsewhere should remember that as they write checks to their favorite institution of higher learning, but especially keep it in mind next time they enter the ballot box.

Filed Under: Crime, Education, Law, Local, National, Politics, Population, Society

Senate Dems Exploit VAWA to Increase U-Visas

March 20, 2012 By FAIR Gov't Relations Team Leave a Comment

The following story appeared in FAIR’s March 19 Legislative Update. To subscribe to FAIR’s Legislative Update click here.

According to Democratic aides, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to file a motion that would begin debate on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) this week. (CQ Today, Mar. 15, 2012) Although VAWA was created to increase protections for women suffering domestic violence and abuse, it has become the latest vehicle for the open-borders lobby to increase visas and grant amnesty to illegal aliens.

The version currently before the Senate, S. 1925 introduced by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), contains provisions that could increase the number of U-visas by 34,000. Congress created the U nonimmigrant visa in 2000 to allow aliens who have suffered substantial physical or mental abuse as a victim of domestic violence, rape, or certain other crimes to obtain temporary legal status if they help law enforcement prosecute those crimes. (INA § 101(a)(15)(U); see also FAIR Legislative Update, Feb. 6, 2012) An alien can obtain a U visa regardless of legal status, remain in the country for four-years at a time, receive work authorization, and become eligible for a green card after three years. (INA § 214(p); USCIS Website on U visas) S. 1925 would increase the number of U visas by permitting the “recapture” of thousands of unused U visas from prior years. (CQ Today, Feb. 2, 2012)

Some Senate Democrats have made no qualms about using VAWA in a hotly contested election year to get more visas. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, has said he wants to fast-track VAWA with the U-visa provisions so that Republicans would block it, enabling him to paint the party as anti-women. (Politico, Mar. 14, 2011) “If a party chooses to alienate the fastest-growing group of people in the country [Latinos] and the majority of people in the country, women, they do so at their peril,” Schumer said Wednesday. (Id.)

Republican leaders strongly objected to Schumer’s plan. “Nobody opposes the reauthorization of this legislation,” said Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ). (CNN, Mar. 15, 2012) He told reporters: “If you follow the Judiciary Committee work on it, the questions had to do with the additions that have been made to this bill related to illegal immigrant visas…. I really resent the implication by some of my Democratic friends that if you’re trying to improve the bill that somehow you are for violence against women. That’s reprehensible.” (Id., see also FAIR Legislative Update, Feb. 6, 2012)

Republicans said they may move their own bill once the issue heads to the floor. (Politico, Mar. 14, 2011) Stay tuned to FAIR as details unfold…

Filed Under: Education, Jobs, Law, National, Politics, Population, Society

The New Radical Chic: Send an Illegal Alien to College

March 6, 2012 By Dan Stein 16 Comments

President Obama recently claimed that “we can be a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.” Apparently his buddies in the globalist Silicon Valley billionaires circle missed the memo – the part where the law is addressed. They just want their foreign workers, the hell with the law. Their plan is to encourage illegal immigration with special scholarships just – and only — for law breakers.

This sounds like a felony to me.

Axiom: Anything that encourages illegal immigration tends to produce more illegal immigration. That’s why Congress criminalized such behavior under the term “harboring.” People go to jail for harboring illegal aliens.

The United States Code provides that any person who “encourages or induces an alien to … reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such … residence is or will be in violation of the law” OR “aids or abets the commission” of such acts, is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years. (8. U.S.C. 1324; INA Sec. 274) . There it is. Plain as can be. The only exception to harboring is “mere employment”; anything else, like providing transportation, housing, shelter or doing anything that helps the illegal alien remain is harboring.

This sounds like the world’s most elite alien harboring conspiracy.

In what most would consider an appalling lack of judgment, billionaires from Silicon Valley are – in the name of philanthropy – funding scholarships at colleges and universities for illegal aliens – knowing they are illegal aliens. According to the Wall Street Journal, the list of donors (either individually or through family foundations) includes Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot; Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel Corp.; Mark Leslie, founder of the former Veritas Software Corp.; and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs.

Beyond the obvious criminal implications, this push to help illegal alien students is misguided on so many levels. On an individual level, while these donors may feel they are generously helping an illegal alien, they are also hurting countless other legal residents and U.S. citizens who desperately want to go to college and are finding it harder and harder to get one of those coveted admissions slots.

On a policy level, one may argue that giving scholarships to illegal aliens students gives them a leg up and does not reward criminal behavior because the student was brought to the U.S. when very young. Many of these students are in their twenties, so who knows when they came. But even if it were, the parents here illegally are absolutely rewarded for coming here illegally – their kids got an education at everyone’s expense – first via a public K-12 education, and then through these scholarships and other similar programs.

If U.S. born students had all the educational support, financing and opportunity they needed, and if this weren’t a patent violation of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, perhaps – just perhaps – the policy argument makes sense. But where you stand depends on where you sit. I can tell you where a lot of U.S. citizens students won’t be sitting: in college classrooms.

Filed Under: Crime, Education, Law, National, Politics, Population, Society

Senators Continue to Press for ”Back to the Future” Guest Worker Visas Increase

February 16, 2012 By Ira Mehlman 9 Comments

Hollywood produced the last sequel to “Back to the Future” 22 years ago. Thanks to Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) Congress may soon fill the void with “Back to the Future: The E-3 Guest Worker Visa.” This production will star 10,500 new Irish guest workers eager to fill American jobs and supporting cast made up of unlimited numbers of spouses and children (up to age 21).

While the original “Back to the Future” may have been a pleasant trip down memory lane to America of the 1950s, the bill being (S. 1983) promoted by Schumer and Brown is far from benign. Aside from the obvious fact that there is no need for an additional 10,500 guest workers in the current economy, the legislation marks a regression back to an immigration policy for which there should be no nostalgia. The legislation is designed to benefit people of a single nationality: the Irish. Irish immigrants may have a powerful lobby, and they may flex some political muscle in New York and Massachusetts, but an immigration policy that gives preference to people based on their country of origin is a path America must never follow again.

FAIR is sharply critical of our current immigration policy, but we’ve always opposed reforms that discriminate in favor or against any group or nationality. We need to change our policies so that they serve America’s environmental, societal, and economic interests today and into the future. That means a policy where immigrants are selected on their merits, not on their country of origin or who they happen to be related to. Moreover, the bill Schumer and Brown are promoting will inevitably result in other ethnic groups demanding special visas in the future.

Our Government Relations department has put together a great summary of this bill and I urge you to take a look at it and familiarize yourself with this piece of legislation.

We’ve seen this picture before and it wasn’t a good one. We don’t need a sequel.

Filed Under: Education, Jobs, Law, Politics, Population, Society

ND University Awards Hundreds of Unearned Diplomas to Foreign Students

February 15, 2012 By FAIR Gov't Relations Team Leave a Comment

The following story appeared in FAIR’s February 13th Legislative Update. To subscribe to FAIR’s Legislative Update click here.

Last week, the North Dakota University System released an internal audit showing that Dickinson State University for years has awarded hundreds of diplomas to foreign students who did not earn them. (Associated Press, Feb. 10, 2012) It also revealed that the University enrolled students who did not speak English and enrolled others who did not have qualifying grades.

The audit examined foreign students who participated in a program that allowed them to earn degrees both from Dickinson State and a university in their home country. Of the 410 students who received degrees, 400 did not have records of completing the required coursework. In addition, of the University’s 127 agreements with international schools to grant degrees to their students, only four had the required details to be recognized as valid. Other findings included evidence that the University admitted students who were not proficient in English or who had falsified transcripts.

About 95 percent of the students in the Dickinson State University program were Chinese, reflecting the growing enrollment of Chinese students nationwide. In fact, China sends more students to the United States than any other country, lured by universities that charge them full tuition. (See Associated Press, Feb. 11, 2012) During the 2010-11 academic year, 157,558 Chinese students were studying in the U.S., an increase of almost 24 percent from the previous year. The number of Chinese students in the United States has risen by at least 19.8 percent for each of the past four years. (Associated Press, Feb. 10, 2012)

At a press conference Friday, Dickinson State University President D.C. Coston said the University will take corrective action, including possible termination of the international student programs. (The Dickinson Press, Feb. 11, 2012) The University has already given notice to two student recruiting organizations that the school will no longer work with them and is still evaluating which University employees were involved in violating official policies. As for the foreign students, Coston said the University would be contacting them. “We will be telling (the affected students) that their records do not indicate they sufficiently completed the requirements,” Coston said. “Dickinson State stands ready to work with them individually to figure out what might be necessary for them to reach a point of completion.” (Associated Press, Feb. 11, 2012)

Filed Under: Crime, Education, Law, Local, Politics, Population, Society

Perhaps This Explains President Obama’s Waning Popularity with Young Voters

February 9, 2012 By Eric Ruark 12 Comments

At the end of last month, the Obama administration announced plans to allow even more foreign students to remain in the U.S. after graduation to take American jobs. His reasoning, on display in his State of the Union address and in his response to the wife of an unemployed engineer, is that American workers are not available or are not capable of filling the many jobs available to them.

But the President’s position immigration policy is disconnected from the reality of the labor market, which is especially brutal for young Americans, including recent college graduates, many of whom have substantial student loan debt. If the President wants a “jobs initiative” shouldn’t his primary concern be finding jobs for U.S. residents? Instead, he is encouraging foreign students to attend U.S. universities and promising to facilitate their entry into the U.S. workforce.

A new report released by the Pew Research Center details just how dire the situation is for young adults (18 to 34 years old) trying to find work.

Among Pew’s other findings:

• Only 54 percent of young Americans are employed, the lowest share since the federal government began tracking this figure in 1948.

• The median weekly income for young adults (18-34) has dropped 6 percent since 2007, “as employers found it easier to restrict the wages for entry-level jobs than to cut the pay of more experienced workers.”

• 19 percent of men ages 25-34 are not working or attending school, up five percentage points from 2007.

• Only 43 percent of young adults are confident that they could find another job if they lost or left their current one.

According to Kim Parker of the Pew Research Center, young adults in America “have a long way to climb back, and a lot of displaced workers to compete with.” What is President Obama’s response to the plight of young American workers? Bring in more foreign workers.

Filed Under: Education, Jobs, National, Politics, Population, Society
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