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The anti-immigrant mania gripping state legislatures around this country has plummeted to new depths. Anything goes if it shows our utter distain for- make that irrational thinking about- undocumented immigrants. And that includes self-mutilation.
Case in point: the Virginia House Education Committee moved a bill this month that clearly contradicts this nation's better interests. It goes far beyond the current coast-to-coast rage to charge hundreds of Latino and Latina high school graduates ten times or more in tuition than what their classmates pay. There are hundreds of such students who came to this country as infants, spent all their school years in the same state thinking they were U.S. citizens, only to find out otherwise at college matriculation time
But at least they're not barred at the door.
The Virginia education committee has voted in support of a bill by Delegate Frank D. Hargrove Sr. to prevent undocumented immigrants from applying to college. Period.
No other state to our knowledge has considered or passed similar blanket eligibility denials to higher education.
A large Latino and Jewish alliance traveled to Richmond from throughout the state this month to lobby unsuccessfully against the measure in committee.
Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, speaking for the Hispanic organizations, stressed that the bill could destroy future contributions of young immigrants who were brought here unaware by their parents.
The plain fact is that a portion of our young people's lives can be wrecked, rearranged or damaged to our own detriment.
We have been warned since the mid-'80s that this nation must produce more and more well-educated students as we approach a 3-to-1 worker-to-retiree ratio. When these students graduate and enter the work economy, we need them to prop up Social Security, or some semblance of it as we know it. Not long ago, workers were double that number. Now workers must be better educated to become more productive.
Texas state demographer Steve Murdock has made it abundantly clear that for his state: unless college enrollments hit record highs and its Hispanic and black students populations are trained and educated well, the Lone Star States' economy will stagnate - and poverty will rise three percent by 2015.
That's a scary proposition for one of our
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