Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Steve Poizner, Meg Whitman, engage in Fear Mongering

From an editorial in the Sacramento Bee. April 6, 2010.

So will Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman step up and admit they're misleading California's voters about college students who are also illegal immigrants?
Both have been bashing the students as a financial burden on taxpayers to prove their tough-on-illegal immigration bona fides to the party faithful. They both want to repeal Assembly Bill 540, which grants in-state tuition to some non-residents, including some illegal immigrants.
But as The Bee's Susan Ferriss reported last week, those students represent a tiny fraction – 1 percent or less – of all students in all three of the state's higher education systems. On University of California campuses, for instance, there were fewer than 2,000 students who were not state residents but were paying in-state tuition in 2007-08 – and UC says only as many as 400 were illegal immigrants.
So the savings from rescinding AB 540 would be far less than the candidates suggest, a minuscule portion of the higher education budget.
Many of the students were brought here as young children by their parents; even to be eligible for in-state tuition, they have to graduate from California high schools and must have attended for at least three years. And many of them will stay in California, so the state has a real stake in their education and future.
Poizner, in particular, isn't letting the facts get in the way in his desperation to catch Whitman. He also wants to change federal law to bar the public school doors to illegal immigrant children. In a TV spot promising to end taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants, he rails against "years of liberal failure."
"We all know California is heading right over a cliff," Poizner says in the ad, as a car falls off a precipice. "Politicians have lacked the guts to tackle the problem."
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/06/2657465/steve-poizner-meg-whitman-engage.html#ixzz0kLeQmXyp

1 comment:

Hugo said...

I had recently applied to Foothill College and Diablo Valley College, both in California. In the past, when applying to colleges, the questions regarding one's status in the state were simply answered and you will receive one's student ID. Later, one can simply enroll in classes. On this occasion, I actually reapply, for I needed some lower level classes to be able to graduate from a BA at a university. However, this time, after applying for college, I got an email message stating that I was classified as "out-of-the-state" student. As a result, I will have to pay out of state tuition; the message stated that if that information was wrong, I should contact the college. In this particular case, that was Foothill College in Santa Clara County, CA. I went to the college to clarify the situation; after speaking to one of the college admin/registration representatives, and explaining that I do not understand why I was classified as of out of the state. I have being living in the state for 17 years, & legal immigrant. This college representative look at me with what I will classify as a sense of anger, she stated that I will have to fill out a form that will verify my status, and she said, "and even then, we will see". I obviously felt bad; here this person seemed to me racist and ignorant. I felt that I was somehow label or stereotyped. I look Latino because I am Latino. I might not master English but here I am trying to become a better person. Thus, I fill out the form, but this time I waited a little bit more and observe all the admin representatives of the college, just to look at their attitudes. That particular person, who attended me in the first place, had some issues. Thus, I decided to go with another one who seemed to be much friendly and willing to do his work, rather than becoming an INS representative without pay.
The type of propaganda that we have seen on advertisement has actually trigger racist attitudes among some members of our society, allowing them to become predators who will eventually brake away from moral and ethical behavior in pursuit of a racist-war like attitude, diminishing even more our American core values. These American core values, of respect for freedom, liberty, success, cooperation, and innovation are at risk. I do not want my nation to become the next Hitler's land. I want my America to recover its pursuit for freedom and success; I want it to be multicultural yet unique in its essence. America is great because of those core values. Let us work to keep it that way, pluralistic, tolerant, and progressive.