Senate panel rejects in-state tuition for children of non-citizens
Posted on Wednesday, 02.01.12
Senate panel rejects in-state tuition for children of non-citizens
A Senate panel voted down a bill to extend in-state college tuition to state residents who are U.S. citizens with undocumented parents.
By Kim Wilmath
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
TALLAHASSEE -- His home ravaged by earthquake, 16-year-old Renato Lherisson returned to his birthplace, the United States, to finish high school and earn a college degree.
The Haitian student envisioned studying political science all the way to the doctoral level and maybe working for the United Nations one day. But now he’s just hoping to afford one class this semester.
Lherisson is one of many students — the number is impossible to determine — who must pay out-of-state tuition even though they are U.S. citizens and Florida residents. It is because they are dependent on their parents, who are not citizens. And in Florida, it is the parent’s status that counts.
A bill that would have extended in-state tuition to such students, if they lived in Florida for at least two years, was voted down Tuesday in a Senate Higher Education Committee meeting.
More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/01/2620096/senate-panel-rejects-in-state.html
This is the same state which is home to hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have moved here since the early 1960's, many of whom arrived as illegal immigrants, but, because of their political value to the U.S. are offered, under the conditions of the Cuban Adjustment Act, are immediately rewarded instant legal status if they arrive on dry land under their own power, (are not intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard first) instant green card, social security, welfare, Section 8 Housing, (provided through the tax dollars of U.S. citizens) medical treatment, food stamps, financial assistance for education, etc., etc., etc.
All others are thrown in jail, then deported, if caught.
How fair is that?
Even some corporate media have referred to Cuban immigrants as "economic immigrants" rather than "refugees, defectors, etc." yet the doors to the U.S. taxpayer-derived perks are thrown wide open for them.