Not sloughing off the responsibility onto the employers, CBEscapee; well, not any more than the government already did when they passed the law requiring proof of legal residency be provided to the employer when one gets hired.
So, I guess that makes a lot of folks doubly criminal, hey: breaking the law to enter the country, and then breaking the law by providing false documentation for employment.
Well how many young American students have used a fake ID to get into a bar and be served alcohol? And everytime they’ve done that it’s another offense.Criminals, ever’ damn one of them!! And some would have a rap sheet as long as their arm.
As Sailor has pointed out again and again…there is a complete set of double standards.
sailor:
No, I didn’t miss the point at all. You didn’t say, “The issue isn’t what should federal law say, it’s what should Oregon law say given what the federal laws already are.” You said, “The president and congress and the other people who rule you have decided what the laws are, and who are you to question them?” Or, to use your words, “Deal with it.” You then went on to accuse us all of wantion hatred of illegals, and a desire to see them flogged with Twizzlers, or something equally bizarre. As I said before, a stupid, stupid response. At any rate, the point is moot.
CBEscapee:
Well then, to complete the analogy, the only proper response is to stop checking IDs completely, and never punish anyone for using a false ID.
How hard is it to see that saying “People should not do X, and we should properly enforce laws against X” is different than saying, “Every last person who does X is a completely worthless trogolodyte of a person, and should be fired out of a cannon into the sun”? There’re lots of laws that get ignored, for lots of different reasons. In almost all cases, I think the laws should either be enforced, or abolished. But few laws are so wholesalely ignored as immigration laws.
Oh, and for the record, you’re right - every student who has ever used a false ID is a criminal, by definition.
Jeff
>> I think the laws should either be enforced, or abolished. But few laws are so wholesalely ignored as immigration laws.
Yes but that is not the question asked in this thread. that is another thread altogether.
the uestion in this thread assumes there is a certain level of illegal immigration and that is not going to change anyt time soon. Saying “but it should change” is skirting the issue.
Be patient, you guys. Some people here only see in black and white, and so the grey(ish blue) background to every other post must be throwing them off…
OK, after all this discussion, here’s how I’ll wrap up my take:
Anyone known to be an illegal alien should be prosecuted according to the law of the land. I’m not sure exactly what that is, but I assume it is a hearing with the potential of being deported.
Minor children of illegals cannot, in most cases, be held responsible for the actions of their parents. They should be kept with their parents (either sent back to their native countries or allowed to stay in this country if their parents are allowed to do so).
Time accrued in a state as an illegal alien should not be credited towards residency for college discounts (or any other resident/citizen priviledges). If their parents or the kids suddenlly become “legal”, start the clock then. The payment of taxes issues is not relevent. I see this in the same light as some kid who, while residing in another state, uses a fake address to claim residency. Cheating and breaking the rules simply cannot be reworded if we expect anyone to play by the rules.
If they can’t afford tuition, wait for the time until you do qualify as a resident or go to a junior college where tuition is dirt cheap.
sailor:
That’s all well and good, as far as it goes. However, the question regarding Oregon’s law is directly related to the larger immigration problem. For one thing, it’s necessary to understand why we have immigration laws in the first place. For another, even if you accept illegal immigration as a problem that’s not going away soon, proposing laws that could further exacerbate the problem is certainly not a good idea.
And I, for one, never simply stated, “Well, but it should change.” I think it should, but that wasn’t my point. My point was that encouraging the breaking of immigration laws, whether by refusal to enforce them, or by the passage of laws which conflict with the goal of minimizing illegal immigration, is a bad idea. With all that taken into account, one can then begin to question the value of this particular law. Which, as I said before, seems more-or-less sound.
John Mace:
I agree with you in spirit, John, but I have a minor quibble. As I see it, minors have little control over their place of residency. Thus, I would allow minors to count time spent as an illegal for the purposes of determining residency, assuming they sought to become legalized as soon as they turned 18. It’s always harder to enter college the longer you’ve been out of high-school, and I fear that forcing all potentially college-bound illegals to wait at least three years before they could attend college would do more to discourage them from entering college in the first place.
However, if a certain amount of time passes after they reach adult-hood (6 months? a year?), and they still haven’t sought to become legalized, then I would discount any time spent as an illegal alien.
As I see it, this would help to encourage illegal minors to legalize themselves as soon as possible.
Jeff
Jeff: I agree it’s a minor quible and frankly I wouldn’t be all up in arms if the Oregon proposal did in fact become law. I just see it as an issue of not rewarding cheating, even if it’s your parents who did the cheating. If I were to learn that the parents had to pay some significant fine for the time the spent here illegally, then I might think differently. However, it seems fair that if we ignore the time they were here illegally, it should be as if they had actually spent that time in their native country. There are plenty of instances where US born kids have their parents cheat on something and the kids don’t get to pretent like it didn’t happen. Suppose the US kid’s parents lie about their finances on an application for finacial aid. Do we then say, Oh go ahead and give the kid aid anyway, it was his parents who cheated not him?
John:
I fully understand your reasoning. Not sure if I agree with it entirely or not, really, but I still understand it. 
Jeff
Well, in IL, the state income tax is 3% of the Federal AGI, less a 2,000 deduction per dependent. Thing is, if an illegal isn't paying any federal taxes for whatever reason (such as being paid off the books, or not making enough to owe tax), they pay exactly $0 in state tax. One can argue about the regressivity of sales tax, but user fees, IMHO, are inherently fair, in that one pays for what one uses. Use the tollway? Pay the toll. Own a car? Pay the registration fee. Visit the State Park? Pay the entrance fee. How is that unfair, to anyone?
Carefull, Jeff. The rumor mill might start that you now advocate free college for all illegal aliens. Hell, someone might start calling you a bleeding heart liberal.
Let me just stop in for a minute to clarify some legal/procedural point, and then I really must go dig myself out of the boxes piled aorund from yesterday’s move (this was just a quick break to check my phone/modem hookup):
States have a certain amount of discretion in deciding the regulatory basis for qualifying as an in-state resident for tuition purposes. I’ve never seen a state, though, that would consider someone a resident until he/she had COMPLETED the green card process. Depending on how you define the green card process, it can take several years from initiation to completion, even if the individual in question is doing evrything as quickly as humanly possble, due to various state/federal processing backlogs inherent in the green card process. Even a green card based on marriage to a U.S. citizen (which is almost always the quickest way to go) is taking 2+ years in Chicago these days.
Individual unversities, especially private ones, have the discretion to use their own endowment-based financial aid funds however they please. Very few of them offer significant scholarships to foreign students at the undergrad level; many do at the grad level, but these are teaching or research assistantships for the most part, not outright grants. This means that conceptually they are more akin to salary for services performed than a true scholarship, and are competitively awarded based on ability. I think they belong in a separate category.
As federal regs stand now, postsecondary institutions are not supposed to admit students who are not legally present in the U.S. at all (whether as permanent residents or on student visas), let alone give them scholarships. So I really, really doubt that all the community college slots are taken up by illegals. Foreigners, possibly, but probably not illegals. These days you can’t even get a SS# unless you are authorized to work, which most people on student visas are not until they complete their degrees (although there are certain exceptions for practical training and on-campus employment, both of which are authorized on a case-by-case basis by the school’s foreign student office). I have zillions of clients whose spouses cannot work legally, although they reside legally in the U.S., because most of the time dependents of people on work visas are not allowed to work until they are nearing the end of the green card process.
You can’t just apply for a green card and get one because you feel like it; they are based on one of several statutory criteria, such as qualifying employment for which there are no U.S. workers willing and available or a qualifying relationship to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. (More detail on request, or check some of the FAQs at www.aila.org). Obviously, if you could just apply if oyu felt like it, we would have far more people in the queue than we already do.
OK, carry on. I’ll be back later, once I can see at least a couple of flat surfaces in my apartment around the boxes.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
That’s insane. But it obviously varies from state to state - here it seems to be having lived here for a certain number of years (I think 2) and done things that imply that you’re living here. (Gotten a license, registered to vote, etc.) Most of the out of state students become residents by the time they’ve graduated.
But that’s neither here nor there, because I’m not in Oregon - what is worth mentioning though is that Oregon gets a huge percentage of its budget from income taxes, there is no state sales tax. In fact, from what I understand, that’s why their state economy is doing so bad right now, the national economy plummeted, the businesses died, individuals are making less (or no) money, and therefore are paying less on income tax.
It seems strange that it would come up in Oregon…
Yes, it applies when your parents move while you’re in college. Usually, it’s not an issue if you’re staying at the same school, but if you transfer or apply to a professional program, you become an out-of-state student. This happened with someone I know who applied to vet school during her third year of undergrad under a reciprocation program. Her parents had moved the year before, she was under 24 and didn’t have a degree yet, so she was ruled a non-resident and had to apply for one of the 10 out of state spots instead of one of the 34 Kentucky resident spots.
Yes, I know this varies greatly by state. However, if Oregon has similar rules, then this legislation would be a big pile of horseshit. If not, like I said before, I’m fairly neutral on the subject.