Arkansas Blog

I would prefer the colleges discriminate against the illegals as to allowing them into the school. Maybe they can pass another law here in Arkansas that will stop anyone from suing the colleges for the citizenship checks. We already have a major problem with illegals here in Arkansas. You would think the slackers in the government would be glad to have the help in identifying illegals. I'm sorry, I forgot were in "Deliverance" and anything goes here in the "Natural" State. As long as the elected officials here think they can get a few extra votes from one party or the next, they will let everybody in, and as long as the illegals pay the tuition fees to the colleges, those greedy large mouthed fresh water fish emulsion people will let anyone in. They should make it mandatory that students have to prove citizenship or legal residency in order to attend any and all schools, grade school on up to a B.S. No proof, no go to school! No "Green Card", no "ID", should be immediate refusal for entry. We Americans should not coddle criminals the way we do, it only makes more criminals do more illegal actions. Hey, whose going to do a damn thing about it?

I can only hope that this wrong-minded and self-defeating new practice is challenged, defeated and changed. It's like running a group of people into a box, a dead-end, and just forgetting about them.

If a child is born or brought here by her parents, raised in Arkansas, attends Arkansas public schools for 12 years, perhaps receiving the hard-bought extra effort (and expense) of English as Second Language remedial education and then graduates with college potential, she has now reached the end of the line under this new law. She cannot attend college in Arkansas without a U.S. birth certificate and has no clear path to citizenship because of the potential legal peril to her illegal parents.

Formerly, many Arkansas colleges would have been able to admit this student as a resident of Arkansas. She is still a resident and product of Arkansas public schools. Shouldn't the state's people want a potential worker to attain higher education, creating a work force of greater potential? To put it in economic terms, don't we as a state want to reap the benefit of the education we've already "invested" in this student?

I guess the answer is no. We will be creating a class of more low-wage workers, perhaps even undocumented workers, encouraging the system to exploit these Arkansas high school graduates for lower pay and a shadowy, unstable work life. What will this do to wages for "legal" workers? Time and again, it has proved true that an available stock of abusable, exploitable workers will pull down opportunity, pay and benefits for all workers. The majority of these workers will, when employed, pay taxes and Social Security monies into the system. The will pay local sales taxes, license fees, property taxes and school millages. But they will be filling an eddying pool of wasted human potential.

The resolution of citizenship status of 18-year old, U.S. high school graduates should come first, with a system of application for citizenship that is quick, fair and efficient, perhaps lasting from 18-21. We should be able to patriate these blameless graduates who could, in short order, become productive tax-paying citizens. As minors, they had no hand in where they were born or brought by parents to live but they ARE HERE NOW.

Through our 16 and 21 year old children, we have met, known and encouraged many children of Hispanic descent who have attended school alongside our own kids. I assure you, one third grader looks like another and the legal status of their parents has no bearing on their individual worth. I have attended the honor roll assemblies, student activities, sports and band concerts where I have seen as many of these students as those of any other background excel in scholarship and extra-curricular accomplishments. I have sat in the audience applauding their graduation and seen their proud and dream-filled faces as they take their diplomas. So how am I supposed to view them the day AFTER graduation? As criminals? What are the teachers and administrators who gave equal or perhaps more effort to the education of these students to think?

And what are these graduates to think of themselves?

I am reminded of the most heartbreaking chapter of Maya Angelou's autobiographical work "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." In it, she details the pride and excitement felt by her graduating class about to attend ceremonies at their segregated school in Stamps. In their best clothes, brimming with happiness and filled with the dreams of taking their place in the world, the students' worth was to be cruelly underrated by the white administrator who gave the commencement talk. To these graduates, he described their upcoming "place" in the work force as domestics and laborers. Angelou described the heads bowing, one by one, across the group of seated graduates. A diploma hard earned was described as their ticket to the same lives their parents had endured.

What are these graduates of today to think as they hear their own commencement addresses? A shining future (but not for me.) The goal of college (but not for me.) Perhaps they hear the extolling of the list of scholarships and college plans of their fellow graduates (but not for them.) What are they to think about their own futures in Arkansas? Because they're finished, now, unless they have the means to pay out-of-state tuition or to leave for a state that will allow them to attend. The investment in their Arkansas educations are either wasted or about to be exported to another state.

It's wrong, and we all know it. I'm voting for Obama and will continue to support and work towards a sane, humane and swift immigration reform to account for and patriate those humans of good character who are here now and want a path to full citizenship - but especially the policies that put these young people first. I'll support it foremost because it is the right thing to do - because of my acceptance of universal human rights. But even those who dislike, fear or even express hatred towards immigrants should be able to understand the efficacy of patriating the young people we have already educated.

Good show, mag! It's a damn shame that some rednecks value human lives differently. The stereotype was invented just for them. They like to pretend the only human life of any value has light skin, all others are lazy, dishonest, and probably dangerous.

But how dangerous is it to deny a kid an education? I don't recall any Rockefellers being arrested for breaking and entering lately. If any Rockefeller is a crack whore, we've not heard about it. Don't these rednecks know that most crime is committed by desperate people of all colors? When poverty, and ignorance paints an uneducated person in a hopeless corner, a whole lot of them bite back. So how is it a good idea to deny education to any child?

I figure every kid that goes off to college is one person less I have to worry about crawling in my window and killing me in the act of robbing my house. Educating our young of any color is the best old age insurance policy we can get on several different levels. JNYJ's (Anonymous Desk member in good standing) lack of compassion is startling and all too common in our uneducated, backward state. But then he's probably got a framed photograph of George C. Wallace standing in the door of the University of Alabama right next to his picture of George W. Bush on the wall.

Or it could be that JNYJ is just jealous since he never made it past the 8th grade, himself. Either way....people like him are a black mark on this country and a dead weigh that's holding us all down.

I was born here and have no green card or other proof of my citizenship....unless you count my birth certificate, which with enough quality time with a copier, I could amend to make it say whatever I want it to say.

How 'bout all you other citizens? Y'all have a quick and ready way to prove you are a citizen as you claim?

Wow......aren't we like 49th in college educated adults?

It sure doesn't seem like good policy to deny college admittance to otherwise qualified students who may or may not have been brought to this country as youngsters....with no say in the matter.

Well, thank god for Mississippi.