The Fallacy of In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants

I heard Lieutenant Governor Tony Brown on WBAL radio today talking about how wonderful it is that Maryland has all of these illegal immigrants and that our state is embracing illegal immigration with some new laws that are being passed.

As you probably know, Maryland State Senator Victor Ramirez (Democrat - Prince George's County) has been sponsoring legislation helping illegal immigrants for years. If I am not mistaken, this is the 2nd year that a bill is being pushed that would allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition to attend Maryland colleges, thus making is less likely that legal Maryland residents can get into college

Didn't Martin O'Malley run on a platform to increase college education opportunities for Maryland residents? Wouldn't admitting illegal immigrants take up spots that would otherwise go to legal Maryland residents? You have a pie. You can only cut it up but so much. Someone is getting left out with this legislation. Is it your child?

Liberal Maryland legislators continue to call these people undocumented individuals. I will continue to call them illegal immigrants. The current state of the bill would allow these illegal immigrants who have graduated from a Maryland high school to attend 2 year community colleges in Maryland and pay in-state tuition. Arguments for the cause say that we should not be punishing the children of criminals because of the illegal choices these criminals have made. Fair enough, except that these people shouldn't be in this country to start. Now we are providing conflicted laws that reward illegal immigrants for being here illegally. Are you following me?

To top it off, Tony Brown said today that Maryland needs an educated workforce and it makes sense for us to provide the opportunities for these illegal immigrants to get a college education so that illegal immigrants can make a contribution to our economy and keep Maryland moving forward. However, as an employer in Maryland, you KNOW that it is ILLEGAL to hire ILLEGAL immigrants. How is this legislation going to help them? Educated or not, illegal immigrants are not legally allowed to work in this country. And if you are an employer and you are caught hiring illegal immigrants, you face big fines. Would Maryland employers intentionally put themselves in this situation?

There are also some stipulations that the parents have to file taxes. Let's think about this - if you are an illegal immigrant and you are living here illegally, are you going to file taxes with the government to let them know you're here? Duh! (Thank you, Charlie Sheen) If any Maryland legislator honestly thinks that illegal immigrants are filing taxes and paying them, they are idiots.

The constant flow of pro-illegal immigration legislation is enabling the people that are the illegal immigrants. We're not doing anything to address the problem. We're giving more illegal immigrants a reason to come here. Eventually, more and more of your tax dollars will be going to support illegal immigrants in Maryland to provide services, such as healthcare, education, and social security, rather than having this money go to deserving LEGAL citizens of Maryland. How do you feel knowing that your benefits are being decreased so that the money can be used to support illegal immigrants?

And I think it goes without saying that we will need massive tax increases as the current structure cannot support the massive influx of illegal immigrants. Martin O'Malley continues to spin the rhetoric with this one. The massive annual tax increases on the middle class are called, "making sacrifices" and "we are all working together" and "we must all share the responsibility" and "making tough choices". What a bunch of crap!

Living in Maryland, it seems like the easy choice for Maryland legislators is raising taxes. The tough choice would actually be to lower taxes and stop this wasteful spending. But that's never going to happen in this state.

Vacation - Day 1

With all of this talk of billions of dollars in stimulus money being spent across the nation and throughout Maryland, I decided that I wanted to do a hand's-on week-long investigation of the economic recovery in the state of Maryland, if, in fact, there is one. Therefore, I dragged my family kicking and screaming to the Dundalk of the east coast - Ocean City, Maryland.

It helped that we had off on Friday July 3rd as the Federal observation of the 4th of July. Most Americans celebrate the 4th of July as a reason to get drunk and grill meat and light illegal fireworks that were purchased in Pennsylvania - not that most Americans need too many reasons to participate in these activities. Heck, some even know the real premise of the date - the celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This year we celebrated 223 years as a free nation.

To get a early start on my investigation we decided to get up at 4am on the 3rd, finish packing the gas-guzzling SUV and throw the kids (literally) into the car and take-off. We hit the road at 5:13, 13 minutes behind schedule.

We were not sure how traffic was going to be. The weekend of the 4th is always the busiest (one of the busiest) weekends of the year. Since we were off on Friday, were people leaving Thursday night? Or Friday morning? Or Friday afternoon? Were the week-long renters still going down on Saturday morning? To hedge our bets we figured the beach traffic would either be heavy or light. And we were right!

We passed Arundel Mills Mall around 5:45 and were surprised to see no police activity in the mall parking lot. By 6am we were nearing Annapolis and passed an odd looking accident. A pick-up truck was smashed up on the roof, windshield, and left-front quarter-panel, blocking the left left of I-97. In response were an ambulance, a fire truck, a police car, and 3 small orange cones safely placed six inches apart 3 feet from the rear of the firetruck.

We arrived at the Bay Bridge at 6:15am and crossed with ease, though I was surprised how many people were already on the road. We continued along U.S. Route 50 through Queenstown, Easton, Cambridge, and Vienna. Though never stuck in a traffic jam, traffic was fairly heavy.

One observation I made was the number of people traveling in the east-bound direction that were of Hispanic decent. My wife suspected that they were going to work. I suspected that most Mexicans don't take folding beach chairs and coolers to work, so I think they were going to Ocean City. What became an initial observation evolved into a game. Every vehicle we passed we would check out the occupants to find out their nationality. Surprisingly, a high minority of them were Hispanic. And a minority of them were high.

Our original plan was to roll into Salisbury and stop at the Burger King. However, my sister-in-law called and asked if we were okay because she heard about an accident near the bridge and everyone within a 5 mile radius died. We assured her it was not us unless heaven had 4 lanes of traffic and miles of cornfields. She also informed us that traffic was very heavy all down Route 50, so I think we were just ahead of the masses. We abandoned our BK breakfast plan quicker than O'Malley abandoned his promise to replace members of the Public Service Commission with qualified individuals. Plan B - press on.

About 30 minutes left in the journey the kids all crashed. Figures. We finally rolled into Ocean City at 8:05am, just as most of the drunks were heading to bed. We made a quick stop at Layton's and got a dozen and a half donuts.

It was at this point that I started noticing tags on many of the buildings. For those that don't speak the street lingo like me, a tag is graffiti indicating your gang association. One message that I saw a lot was "El futuro es hoy." This is Spanish for: "The future is now." Sort of frightening, but considering that we passed most of former residents of Nuevo Leon, I should not be surprised. To top it off I saw an Ocean City DPW truck removing the vintage sign into the city and replacing it with, "Bienvenida a Océano Ciudad."

This is going to be a longer investigation than I anticipated.

Who's Reading Vote NoMalley?

Apparently, Saqib Ali, that's who. Who's that? He's a member of the Maryland House of Delegates and represents liberal District 39 in Montgomery County.

Why would he be reading this blog? Well, I've tagged in a couple of times. And like a modern educated politician, which is the total antithesis of most of the delegates from Baltimore City, Ali probably Googled himself and found his name. Delegate Ali appears to be well-educated. He has a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science from the University of Maryland (yeah -Terps!). Sound like my kind of guy.

I'm fairly certain that he wrote his own bio on Wikipedia. I only write bios for Republicans and his is written like a political campaign pamphlet - not that there's anything wrong with that. I applaud him for being proactive and utilizing all of the means available to him to promote himself....unlike Republican Delegate LeRoy Myers who totally snubbed me. I bet he Twitters and wouldn't be surprised if he's on Facebook. Perhaps I'll try to add him as a friend when I get home.

So how do I know that Delegate Ali reads (or has read) my blog? Because he left this comment:

Saqib Ali said... Interesting Blog.Would love to explain to you sometime why my bills are not stupid. I'm *sure* I could convince you ;)

Thank you, Delegate Ali, for reading my blog. And I appreciate your comment, though I did find it interesting that you left the comment on the post about how hot Valerie Bertinelli is. :-)

I hope by "interesting" he means that this is the best f-in' blog he's ever read and he set it as his homepage when he opens his web browser in the morning. I mean, where else are you going to find top-notch political banter along with hot pictures of Reese Witherspoon and news on Van Halen? Only on VoteNoMalley!!!

So my message to Delegate Ali - I would love for you to explain to me why your bills are not stupid. And I don't think I called your bills "stupid". I did give you a Bonehead Award for wasting time and money in the General Assembly, but that was one of about 80 awards that were given.

[Correction] - I found that I did say "Stupid Bills" in my Top 10 List on the side bar. In fairness, I reworded this to be "unneeded". My apologies to Delegate Ali.

One particular item that I know I will NOT agree with Delegate Ali is his sponsorship of HB6 (2007). This bill was to allow for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Seriously? You wanted to use MY tax money to give in-state tuition to people who are illegally in this state??? How about you sponsor a bill to tax illegal immigrants and give me the money to help me steal cars? I mean, I gotta make a living doing something, right? I'm not getting rich by blogging.

Coincidentally, another bill is before the House of Delegates (HB 387 2009). On the surface, this bill looks like it makes sense. However, once you factor in all the amendments that the hard left-wing liberal extremists have added, you now have a bill that will allow for a 2-tiered drivers license system - one for illegal immigrants and one for Marylanders. I cannot seem to find how Delegate Ali voted, though I do not see his name as one of the sponsors of the bill, so based on his previous support of illegal immigrant activity, I'll assume that he supports drivers licenses for illegal immigrants until I see otherwise. Why will I assume that? Because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want.

Furthermore, WBAL Channel 11's question of the day was something to the effect of, "Do you support drivers licenses for illegal immigrants?" My answer (as always) is 'I support deportation of illegal immigrants, so they don't really need a drivers license now, do they???'

The illogical argument that illegal immigrants perform the jobs that Americans won't do does not hold water when unemployment is rising rapidly and our taxes are going up along with it. If I'm unemployed and have been for a while, you better believe I'll clean toilets or cut grass.

So, Delegate Ali - I'm listening!