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Front-Page News: “Dreamers Face Uphill Path to College”
My hometown newspaper (The Island Packet, here in Hilton Head) had a front-page news story today about “Dreamers.” Note: this was not an editorial. This is supposed to be news. The headline: “Dreamers work long hours, face uphill path to college.” Subhed: “Supporters say tuition policy hurts Dreamers, taxpayers.” The first paragraph: “While South Carolina taxpayers spend roughly $13,200 annually to educate each K-12 student, state policies obstruct one group of SC students from advancing their education beyond high school.”
The “news” story makes the point that because “Dreamers” must pay out-of-state tuition rates at SC universities, they have “few affordable in-state options” and some don’t go to college at all. So the author believes, apparently, that it’s ok to pay out of state tuition if you’re from Georgia, but not if you’re from Ecuador. This seems like satire, so I included a picture of the front page, just in case some of you weren’t sure if this post was a parody or not:
This is accompanied by another story about a hard-working, intelligent, athletic, virtuous, talented, honest student in Houston who is simply a wonderful person despite being, technically, an illegal alien by some out-dated irrelevant definition. What some kid in Houston has to do with an article about in-state tuition at Clemson, I’m not sure. Unless, of course, this is simply propaganda, and is not a news story at all. But it’s a front-page news story. So, I guess, I don’t understand.
Oddly, this “news” story does not simply report the facts. In fact, there are very few facts to be had in this, um, news story. Instead, the uninitiated observer might think that this was written in an effort to persuade the reader to a certain point of view.
I doubt that the media was ever impartial, but I think they used to at least try to put on appearances. At least somewhat. But no longer. They are simply an extension of the Democrat party. Those who mock conservatives for imagining a left-wing bias in the media are out of their minds. Or stupid. Or college professors. Or progressives. Or, of course, all of the above.
Modern media has jumped the shark.
I know that this post lacks in originality. But we should keep pointing this out. Endlessly. Because the media are hostile partisans. Endlessly.
They never stop, and neither should we.
Published in General
Kid can go back to Mexico and get his education at their rates though.
I have, Gary.
Your suggestion that only ignorance or heartlessness could possibly explain my conflict on this topic is extremely offensive to me.
Extremely offensive.
Thus, I will refrain from responding when I’m this angry. I’ll calm down and respond later.
But I would be cautious about dismissing the viewpoints of others based on presumptions about your moral superiority.
I have defended your views on this space before. Repeatedly. As you know. I often disagree with you, but I truly value your input.
I’ll respond later. Because right now, I find nothing worth defending in your petty accusation.
Come on, Gary. Surely you think your point of view has at least some merit. Why preemptively forfeit with absurd accusations?
I’ve written questionable stuff before. I understand. It happens. I guess.
But you know me. And that is how you make your point?
Come on. That was over the top.
DACA is and was unconstitutional on its face. I was thrilled when DAPA was struck down by the Texas Federal District Court, and affirmed by the Fifth Circuit. But, DACA should be enacted.
Legal status for Dreamers. For their parents, a sliding scale based on points. Have they been out of trouble? Are they employed? How have they behaved? What skills do they have? I would engineer the sliding scale so that 90% of the parents could have a path to legal status.
Of course, this means that the law must be changed to not allow chain migration.
And anyone who came in after Trump was elected can never achieve legal status; they were put on notice that the world had changed when Trump was elected.
Dear Dr. Bastiat,
I did not mean to be offensive to you. I apologize for the pain that I have caused you. I appreciate that you are speaking from the heart.
I think that is appalling how the Dems manipulated this issue. First when George W. was the President, Obama voted for numerous poison pills to the bill that, if memory serves had passed the House. Second, with a filibuster-proof Senate in Obama’s first two years, the Dems could and should have passed a legislative DACA. Instead they have been duplicitous and sought to dirty our good name.
I have no experience with MS-13. My experience of Dreamers that I have meet is that they are really nice, hard-working people.
I think that this is a bit like the issue like same-sex marriage. When I knew very few gay people, I opposed “gay marriage.” But I remember having lunch with a lesbian friend of mine. She said, “Gary, it would have been so much easier to be a heterosexual.” As I met more and more gay people, my views shifted. I have not met a single “bad apple” Dreamer. That has colored my views.
Gary
As a lawyer, Gary, do you think a person should be treated differently by the law, or that the law should bend to the will of someone, according to how nice they are? As heartless as it may sound, how nice someone is really has nothing to do with whether a law is a good idea or not. By bringing up that as a point of reference you can see how an opponent of the law would read it as you saying that they simply hate nice people, or something similar.
I can see your point of view. Good point.
We are faced with a quandary, what to do with the people who were brought here as children. I think that it cries out for a legislative solution.
B.I.G. yep on this one.
I think they should’ve given all of the Quantitative Easing money to the poor and the middle class instead of the already wealthy and the financial system.
We will never learn.
I love how complicated and arbitrary this is. Not that I have a better idea.
#GOSPLAN
P.S. everyone that is sympathetic to La Raza has to live in North Dakota.
We all know what happens when we pass a law, setting up rules for who qualifies for DACA and how their parents are treated. It will immediately be challenged in the courts, and liberal judges around the country will ensure that it gets watered down until everyone qualifies and no one ends up getting deported. The Left has jumped in to defend MS 13 gang members, no one is too criminal or undesirable to be allowed to stay.
No DACA, no amnesty till we have a real wall and real border controls etc so that we can at least keep to a minimum the future invasion we will face.
90 percent removes any incentive for the next wave to stay home.
If I thought chain migration and birthright citizenship would actually be curtailed, maybe I could support a similar (but stricter) plan. But do you believe that it would actually happen? Do you believe that the combination of centrist Republicans and Democrats in the current congress calling for DACA will do any such thing? That’s Lucy again, telling you that this time she will hold that football.
I’m always surprised that any state school that receives Federal funds can charge a different rate for a student that is not a resident of said state. If taxpayers from all 50 states are contributing a portion of their taxes to support schools across the nation then out of state tuition seems odd to me.
Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota have some reciprocity which is pretty cool.
Maybe there’s some way that a program can be started for repatriating dreamers and other long-term illegals, under the supervision of the U.S. embassy in whatever is their country of origin, helping them reintegrate and improve the conditions of their home countries with the education and experience that they gained in the U.S.
Even better, what if it was a kind of mandatory Peace Corps. As part of the program, they are sent back to their country of origin for two years, doing the kinds of things that the Peace Corps does. At the end of the two years, they can either choose to stay in their home country or begin a fast-tracked path to U.S. citizenship. Those who don’t want to do the work, are simply released back into their country. Those who do want to do the work may choose to stay and continue this kind of work, improving places from which many want to escape.
This sounds really good in theory. It needs to be researched. I am very leery of government sociological experiments. If it was all free will basis, it would be no big deal.
Well, it wouldn’t be wholesale free will. It would be a way station towards deportation or citizenship. Kind of like a job training program, with a couple of options. You can either work for two years in this U.S. program to improve the quality of life in your home country and then qualify for U.S. citizenship, or you have the free will to bail back into your home country. It would give them the benefit of the doubt, enlist them in a worthy endeavor that not only helps them but helps others, and provide them with options at the end.
I like this idea. One of the things we hear about the “dreamers” [Man I hate that expression] is that they have no familiarity/knowledge of their home country. This would be a good way to re-introduce them, then give them a choice at the end of two years – stay there, or some back to the US.
Not sure about this. That’s my point.
Yabbut – we are talking about modern-day Higher Ed – one of the most convoluted systems of wealth-transferral this country ever devised.
Well done. That is what it is.
I wonder if there is anyone – even among rich people – who faces a downhill path to college.
Higher education needs to be completely atomized. Listen to Brian Kaplan interviews. Listen to the Reason Magazine interview of the renegade history guy. Nassim Taleb has some great stuff, but it’s not in all one spot. This topic makes me very angry. So much wasted money and wasted human capital. Graft and destruction.