Add to the files of bad ideas that refuse to die the “Dream Act” and other similar measures that would allow illegal immigrants to enjoy our nation’s privileges without earning them, as American citizens have.
The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act has a noble purpose. It would enable, among other things, the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at colleges and allow them to apply for financial assistance. The basic qualifications, also, seem reasonable. Ostensibly, anyone who has lived in the United States for five years, earned a high school diploma or GED, and possesses good moral character deserves a break.
The problem is “a break” doesn’t necessarily equate with privilege, right, or justice, as some liberal activists claim. In this instance, justice would be in the form of yet another subsidy paid by taxpayers, who foot the bill for the lion’s share of a public-college education.
Let’s set aside for now addressing the insult that Americans should be expected to provide more assistance to an illegal group of people whom taxpayers already have been subsidizing heavily for years. We’ve been educating their children, providing them with health care, and suffering the injustices and associated costs wrought by the hardened criminals among them.
Proponents of the legislation, such as the AFL-CIO, say the United States “has a regrettable history of barring access to higher education for reasons of race and national origin.” They compare the plight of today’s immigrants with that of young blacks who were denied admission into many American universities “when segregation was the law of the land” and young Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned with their families during World War II and denied access to college. Certainly, those were grave injustices, and America today lives with the guilt of the policies of yesterday.
Unfortunately for the AFL-CIO, its comparison is illogical. The injustices of yesteryear were suffered by American citizens —c-i-t-i-z-e-n-s — not i-l-l-e-g-a-l immigrants. Proponents of “social justice” programs frequently and conveniently forget to make that huge distinction.
The same movement has found its way into North Carolina. A controversial bill filed by formerSen. William “Bill” Martin, D-Greensboro, last year also would have granted reduced tuition for illegal immigrants, whose numbers in the state swelled from about 100,000 in 1990 to more than 400,000 in 2000. The legislation, which died in committee, would have further widened the floodgates of state spending and exacerbated North Carolina’s budget deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars over a few years.
Another measure, introduced this year in the General Assembly by Sen. Eric Reeves, D-Wake, and co-sponsors Sens. Tom Apodaca, R-Hendersonville; Fletcher Hartsell, Jr., R-Concord; and Jeanne Lucas, D-Durham, apparently tries to succeed where Martin’s failed. Reeves, though, is taking a lower-profile approach. His bill, consisting of one paragraph, would amend the General Statutes to include the same benefits and qualifications as the Dream Act.
“Notwithstanding other provisions of this section, an individual who has attended school in North Carolina for at least four consecutive years and has received a high school diploma from a school within North Carolina or has obtained a general education diploma (GED) issued in North Carolina shall be accorded resident tuition status,” the legislation says. The bill currently lies in the Senate Education/Higher Education Committee.
Reeves’s use of the term “individual” rather than “citizen” or “resident” and the questionable need for the bill are tipoffs to whom would benefit from the state’s generosity: illegal immigrants.
Again, Martin’s and Reeves’s intentions, at first glance, appear to be compassionate. But are they compassionate to taxpayers, whose children must sacrifice while the children of illegal immigrants prosper?
Many similar ideas are finagling their way into law and onto the backs of taxpayers with greater frequency every year. They provide ample testament to the kind of social welfare programs that continue to drive state government’s budget deficits.
North Carolina’s outlay, and that of other states, for government services provided to illegal immigrants already has reached staggering levels. Sen. Fern Shubert, R-Union, who has introduced a bill that would halt the issuance of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, estimates that these services cost North Carolina’s taxpayers about $1 billion a year. Most of the expenses are incurred in the state’s over-extended criminal justice, health-care, and education systems.
Rather than aiding and abetting criminal behavior with measures such as the Dream Act, federal and state officials should pursue avenues that encourage legal immigration. The United States could do that by increasing the quotas of immigrants it allows into the country and by vigorously enforcing its immigration laws.
Those positive moves alone would turn violators into law-abiding, taxpaying citizens who could fully share and appreciate the benefits and burdens of a democratic government like the rest of us.
Richard Wagner is the editor of Carolina Journal, newspaper of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh.