If you are a high school student in Florida (or have a child who is), and you're a legal resident of the US/state, you might just have your in-state tuition spot handed to an illegal immigrant in the near future. This article talks about a bill (well, two, actually: one in the Florida house and one in the Florida senate) that, per this analysis, will cost the state about $21 million (the first year) and displace about 5,000 legal resident students from higher education institutions in order to provide "College Tuition Subsidy for Illegal Aliens."
Yep, that's what it says: the bill(s), if passed, will attempt to "aid" illegal immigrants, but does so without regard to the impact to citizens and legal residents, without attempting to expand capacity, leading to their displacement. The benefit? Proponents of the bill(s) say that it will "lead to economic and fiscal benefits in the long-term" - that is, that it's an investment with a payoff two or three decades down the road. Those benefits may or may not pan out, and some have reason to doubt the claims (see the analysis for details).
Is it just me, or is this wrong? Similar to my qualms about US (government-sponsored) tuition for Pakistani students (paid for, in part, by my tax money, while my own children don't even get enough loans from the government to cover their college education, and which saddles them with debt, while my own money - which could be used for their education - is being sent overseas to pay for education of Pakistani students), this seems backward from a national perspective, that we're providing all sorts of aid and benefits for non-Americans, while leaving Americans (who are paying for those benefits) out in the cold.
Wrong. Just wrong. Is it time to reboot America?
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