UC Shows Blatant Favoritism toward Illegal Immigrant Students

By Joe Guzzardi
August 15, 2016
 
Soon, the 2016-2017 college fall semester will begin, and millions of young students will embark on their journey to a university diploma. Many have worked summer jobs to help finance their educations, and most have parents who have scrimped and saved to pay the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees.
 
Illegal immigrants, however, may have an easier path. Their tuitions could be funded by generous corporate scholarships, and bountiful university financial aid programs. Think of it. People in the United States illegally, breaking the law, are rewarded with big money subsidies to attend college while they displace worthy American students. The number of incoming college seats are fixed. When one is awarded to an illegal immigrant, a worthy American kid is turned down.
 
The commitment to illegal immigrant students is brazen and in your face. University of California president Janet Napolitano, whose years as Department of Homeland Security Secretary were spent undermining immigration law, issued this shameless statement: “We are committed to continuing a path forward for undocumented students at the University of California. This funding will further strengthen the university’s undocumented student initiative, and help ensure that these students receive the support and resources they need to succeed.”
 
Message to American kids: Sorry, you’re out of luck today, and in the future. Assuming those illegal aliens succeed, as Napolitano is “committed” to making sure that they do, they’ll be in a better position than the citizen kid to find a high-paying job.
 
In her investigative column on illegal immigrant subsidies, Fox News reporter Deirdre Reilly chronicled the scholarship entitlements eagerly distributed to illegal immigrants. They begin with UC’s shocking $8.4 million in taxpayer money doled out through the 2018-19 academic year and offered across all ten of its campuses, $2.5 million in textbook subsidies for aliens as well as graduate and undergraduate fellowships for illegal immigrants. Complaints, if any, can be directed to UC’s Undocumented Legal Services Center which provides illegal immigrants counseling on how to get easier access to taxpayers’ money – budget, $900,000. At UC Merced, the total number of illegal immigrant enrollees exceeds the number of African-American students, an outrage that has flown under the radar.
 
General information websites that provide how-to tips now include advice for illegal immigrants. According to one popular site, “Undocumented students should not hesitate to express their desire to go to college. Thanks to the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, school officials can’t disclose personal information (including immigration status) about students.” Ironically, a dozen states allow illegal aliens to pay the more affordable in-state tuition rate, curious since citizens matriculating out-of-state must pay the higher out-of-state fee. This policy directly violates federal law which says that an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state unless a citizen is eligible for the same benefit.
 
Adding to the scandal is that UC is a land-grant college meaning that it was created as a result of an 1862 Act of Congress for the specific purpose of making education more widely available to California’s children, and funded by generations of state’s taxpayers, not the case with recently arrived illegal immigrants.
 
UC’s blatant favoritism toward illegal immigrant students is done with the full knowledge of and blessing from the White House, and may represent the most irrefutable evidence that, in President Obama’s eyes, Americans come last.
 

###
Joe Guzzardi is a Senior Writing Fellow with Californians for Population Stabilization.
Contact him at [email protected]. Find him on Twitter @joeguzzardi19.