What they call ‘opening up the doors to education’, we call a voter recruitment drive.
Via the Star Gazette:
The state Assembly proposed legislation Tuesday that would allow undocumented immigrants access to financial aid for higher education, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate Republicans signaled that the legislation does not have a bright future.
Under the state-level DREAM Act, immigrants who are not citizens would have access to the state Tuition Assistance Program and other aid. The bill would also create a private scholarship fund for immigrants. The Democratic-led Assembly was set to pass the bill late Tuesday.
“The DREAM Act is not about pitting citizens who were born here against those who were not. It’s not a question of taking resources from one group and giving them to another,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, said at a Capitol news conference Tuesday. “It’s about opening the doors to higher education.”
This particular aspect of immigration is not relegated to those who were born here and those who were not. But it is about those who entered the country legally and those who did not.
Granting tuition assistance and scholarship funds to ‘undocumented’ immigrants certainly does take resources from one group and give to another – specifically, the ‘documented’ immigrants.
Legal immigration requires people to go through a process that takes years of hard work and learning to achieve citizenship. And by taking funds from that pool of people you are punishing them, while simultaneously rewarding those who have entered the country by breaking the laws of a sovereign nation.
And if the moral argument doesn’t get your attention, try this New York taxpayers – The tuition assistance for illegal immigrants program price tag? $25 million.