Kristen Scott, a 21-year-old in blond dreadlocks and a “Mommy's Little Monster” T-shirt, said she was sick and tired of illegal immigrants from Mexico getting special treatment, including junior college admission and tuition aid. “They break the law, and they get rewarded. What is that?” Scott said.
—Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24
For years, only coffin dodgers such as California Coalition for Immigration Reform chairwoman Barbara Coe and American Patrol founder Glenn Spencer vented to newspapers that illegal immigrants posed the most ominous threat to the United States since the Irish. But if Kristen Scott is any indication, now it seems college students also want in on the illegal-immigrant bashing.
We don't blame Scott and other undergrads for their zealotry—after all, college students only wish they had the same great lifestyle as illegal immigrants, a segment of the country that shares striking similarities to college students when it comes to housing, love for government financial aid and propensity for travel. Consider:
• College students pay thousands of dollars to study abroad as a way to experience a new country and learn how to live away from home. But illegal immigrants are on permanent study abroad—and they don't even have to wait in long attendance-office lines.
• Southern California college students frequently take weekend excursions to the desert but end up paying too much money for the right to get drunk under the stars alongside thousands of fellow inebriated scholars. Illegal immigrants never face such problems on their desert journeys—they're usually crossing through areas off-limits to the general American public. Plus, illegal immigrants don't pay thousands of dollars upfront for the journey like college students have to—they get to pay it off over decades.
• Many colleges still don't allow female and male coeds to share the same dorm room, prompting a mass exodus from campus housing once students enter their junior and senior years. Illegal immigrants go through that benefit right from the start, frequently sharing apartments with men and women of different backgrounds and ages, usually four or five to a room. Talk about sexy hijinks!
• College students frequently complain about hard-ass RAs or campus security interrupting their fun. But other than their version of RAs—la migra—illegal immigrants have no such worries. Cops are so worried about offending immigrant activists if they deport individuals—which is a federal, not local, responsibility, after all—they generally leave illegal immigrants be.
So why the moaning about government aid for illegal immigrants who want to enter college, collegians? Ever heard of Cal Grants and FAFSA? The recent passage of a state bill allowing illegal immigrants wishing to attend college to apply for aid merely puts them on the same financial footing as hundreds of thousands of other college students.
If you kids with your bluebooks and your toga parties and your Hacky-Sacks really want to go after a group that's subsidized even more than you, we've got one word for you: corporations.
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