A recent bit of investigative journalism by Politico showed that few illegal aliens are taking advantage of the in-state tuition breaks offered by many state universities.
This news should, but probably will not, shoot some holes in the endless propaganda about how a whole generation of future leaders are losing their prospects because of a nasty insistence on the enforcement of the immigration law — about all those illegal aliens who are high school valedictorians who want to go to medical school so they can serve the people, etc.
Many of these are the so-called "Dreamers," illegals who entered the nation before 16 and who have been the subject of countless speeches and press conferences by the mas-migration people.
The fact, as Politico reporter Caitlin Emma discovered, is that despite the extensive publicity about creating these tax-supported tuition breaks, few illegals take advantage of them, and few state educational institutions bother to record them.
Politico found a couple of examples where records were available. At the University of Connecticut, where there are about 18,000 students, 33 aliens have used the new tuition break. That is one-sixth of 1 percent of the student body, 0.18 percent. In California, where illegals are quite common, at UC/Berkeley there are at least a few more than 250 of them in a student body of over 25,000 or about 1 percent of the total enrollment.
Make no mistake, the in-state tuition bargain is a real one. Here are the tuition rates for a citizen resident of New York, and an illegal alien resident of Connecticut, both attending the University of Connecticut:
- Citizen (lives in N.Y.): $28,204
- Illegal alien (lives in Conn.): $9,256
In this instance the illegals get tuition at about one-third of the price paid by the out-of-state citizens. The other costs for both, of course, such as room and board, are the same.
Maybe Politico has stumbled onto the fact well known to demographers that higher education is not in the plans of the vast majority of illegal aliens, no matter what inducements are available.
