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Two Students, Two Standards
By Greg L | 13 April 2008 | Illegal Aliens, Virginia Politics | 34 Comments
The Washington Post has circled back again to discuss the student of illegal alien parents that’s having a hard time getting in-state tuition rates at UVA, this time explaining in more detail why the legal status of the student’s parents impacts the decision about whether to consider the student legally domiciled in Virginia and thus eligible for in-state tuition rates. I have to feel for this student who is a U.S. citizen and a Virginia resident, while at the same time recognizing that this individual is still a dependent, and whatever benefit this student is eligible for largely accrues to his parents. But what about the applicants who aren’t getting into UVA while this student of illegal alien parents who gained admission is trying to get the university to lower his tuition rate?
Juxtaposed in this debate is another Washington Post article which describes how a student — this one without any questions about legal domicile — and who is only one of two National Merit semifinalists from his high school graduating class, was not accepted at UVA because his academic credentials were not competitive enough. With UVA only accepting 3,960 students out of over 20,000 applications, the competition for admission is extremely tough. Despite an SAT score of 2270, absolutely glowing recommendations from his teachers, and strong extra-curricular credentials which include writing novels, this Virginia student doesn’t even get the chance to attend, much less have a debate about what tuition rates should apply to him.
Every time we find a student with illegal alien parents who is clearly worthy of compassionate consideration and decide to provide that student with a break, the reality is that some other student is going to suffer as a result. For every Nelson Lopez we provide with special consideration, there’s a Joe Robinson who isn’t going to find a space in the admissions pool. That’s not to say that one of these students is necessarily more deserving than the other. Perhaps the way this all ended up was the most equitable result we could have hoped for, or maybe this was a complete injustice. The articles don’t tell me enough to feel comfortable with either conclusion.
These articles do however demonstrate that in the current college admissions environment, it’s not useful to talk about all those deserving folks who are worthy of getting a break while ignoring that all those who receive these special favors are effectively taking from some other student, and some other family. Admissions space in our public universities is not indefinitely elastic, making it imperative that the impacts of these decisions be adequately understood. In granting favors to the students of illegal aliens that appear to be contrary to the text of Virginia law, we’re ensuring that an admissions slot for someone else is going to be cut. From a straight policy perspective, it would seem more equitable to require strict compliance with domiciling laws that determine who is eligible for in-state tuition and accept that some rather deserving U.S. Citizens are going to fall victim to the policy, because otherwise a different group of some rather deserving U.S. Citizens will themselves fall victim in a much more arbitrary way.
As long as there’s limited space in Virginia’s public colleges and universities, there will always be the need for some hard decisions. We won’t always be thrilled with the results, but the criteria used to arrive at those results should always be as easy as possible to understand, and thus accept. Otherwise, as the case of these students demonstrates, it’s impossible to determine whether these decisions make any sense at all.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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Enough, enough. The great thing that goes on in America is that kids CAN go to College if they’re qualified and motivated. No one is locked out. If your parents are illegal aliens, declare independence. Then you’re in exactly the same position as boatloads of lower-income American kids - it’s a difficult road to hoe but you can do it if it’s important to you.
What I have seen and noticed is that many lower-class parents don’t prepare their kids for the college experience in any way, beyond not even saving money. They really have no understanding of the process. But this can best be addressed through educational campaigns in high schools.
Let’s work to keep student loans available and work to keep the money available to students a reasonable proportion of what they need. But I’m not crying crocodile tears for illegal aliens’ kids.
“Why in the world would the community seek to prevent further education that’s only going to result in further contribution back to the state, in terms of workforce capacity, productivity, increased revenue?” asked Dan Hurley of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
This plea to emotion is powerful but it neglects something that is very important: The Social Compact our government is founded on was established to protect God given rights (and college admission is not among those rights). The parents who entered the country illegally may be otherwise decent, moral and hardworking people but this decision has consequences. In choosing to violate the law, the illegal alien chooses to set himself apart from the community in an important way- they have chosen not to give up or subordinate their natural rights to empower the sovereign, ( in this case WE THE PEOPLE) to establish the rule of law.
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness –That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
An education and/or the means to creating personal wealth can come from many different paths- journeyman under a master craftsman for example. Might I suggest that the young man, an American citizen, give consideration to service in our military to earn money and independence from his parents in his quest to establish his residency? I commend the young man for his effort and scholarship. I hope he will persue his education. Any thing worth having is worth some measure of sacrifice and who knows, perhaps the extra hardship endured in achieving his college degree will make him an even better citizen and man.
As for the student who was unable to get into JMU, I feel very bad for him, it is very unfortunate. I think this reflects the inability of our university system to adjust to the demands of the market place. We need to reexamine the way we have choked off access to higher education through the public university system. It may well be time to revisit our devotion to compulsory education for 17 and 18 year old students. Perhaps trade/technical schools would bloom in that changed environment? The market will hopefully produce a solution to this need in the near future. Our economic prosperity depends on it.
These two WaPo stories, when placed side-by-side, go beyond “special preferences” including the legal status of a student’s parent.
It is because so many students are competingfor so few desks at our universities that we must have a level playing field for admissions.
In the most recent WaPo story, Joe Robinson had a 3.4GPA and a 2270 SAT Score. He was highly regarded for his academic and community endeavors.
In the previous WaPo story, there was no mention of Nelson Lopez’s academic or community achievements (other than he stayed out of a gang). Yet, shortly after theWaPo story broke, UVA fell all over itself to ensure Lopez’ acceptance … and, as an in-state student.
If Lopez had high a high GPA and SAT Scores, the WaPo would have taken great delight in rubbing that in the faces of its readers. Yet, this critical information was not included in either the initial or the follow up WaPo stories.
WHY?
If Lopez had a higher GPA and SAT Score than Robinson, he won the slot fair and square. If he didn’t, then what message is this sending to our kids?
A 3.4 will not get you into UVA, period.
Sorry but I have to comment further: where’s the story with Joe Robinson? Nothing here is out of the ordinary. A 3.4 from Fairfax is simply not at all impressive. The average GPA for high school students accepted to George Mason is 3.51 and quickly rising.
A high student from Fairfax or PWC who wants to go to UVA or Tech cannot have below a 3.8.
SAT scores will never get you into a University, they can only keep you out.
June does, however, have a point…what was young Mr. Lopez’ GPA that he suddenly warranted such a fast track to UVA?
He is hispanic.
What? You didn’t know that a minority can be accepted to a college with about 0.5 GPA lower than a Caucasian student?
Welcome to my generation.
“A 3.4 will not get you into UVA, period.”
Unless you have an affirmative action angle apparently. Does anybody really think that a high SAT score WOULDN’T have been mentioned in the WaPo article?
Make that high GPA & SAT.
Not sure I follow: are we saying that the grant of in-state tuition to a U.S. citizen, Virginia resident student who is the son of illegal immigrants is keeping worthy NoVA seniors (also U.S. citizens and Virginia residents who have the additional good sense to select U.S. citizen parents) from getting into the Virginia institution of their choice? Seems like that could be empirically established, if true.
Not at all NoVa Scout - what I am saying (can’t speak for others) is students should be accepted into our state colleges based on GPA, SAT and community and academic achivements … not who their parents are.
If Nelson Lopez’ academic and community achievements meet UVA’s acceptance requirements and exceed those of Joe Robinson, then he earned the slot fair and square.
If not, every parent in Northern VA has the right to know why - especially if one of their kids received the “thin letter.”
Illegal aliens are foreign nationals. The dependent children of foreign nationals should not get in state tuition, period. Would your dependent child get in-state tuition if you were a foreign national or even out of state resident? No.
Let the kid and his parents take out loans just like the majority of students and their parents have to.
June Reston
It is a common practice among state Universities to discriminate based in geography. That is, a student with a 3.5 GPA from Waverly, Virginia has a good chance to get into UVA while a kid with a 3.5 from the NOVA area doesn’t stand a chance.
Joe Robinson can go to NOVA for two years and not waste his money.
In fact, NOVA has an agreement with UVA for the following: any NOVA student with a GPA over 3.5 with nothing lower than a C in any class, and nothing lower than a B in any English class, is guaranteed acceptance to UVA.
Junes_Reston: makes good sense to me. I’m not used to that around here.
There is a problem embedded in this thread - but it has nothing to do with illegal immigration (just as virtually all of our other problems have nothing to do with illegal immigration). It is a higher education system that cannot accommodate high-achievement kids from Northern Virginia because the system lacks capacity. It’s another example of NoVA getting the short end of the stick. UVA, William & Mary and, in recent times, Tech and JMU, are great to good universities, but do not adequately meet the potential of the Commonwealth. No way out of this one other than a political will to take the excellence that exists and make it available to everyone who meets certain academic standards in the State.
I recently had the interesting experience of being involved in a University of Texas project and spent some at one of the graduate programs at UT Austin. To avoid the kind of issue described in the Post article, Texas some time ago instituted a policy where the top 10% of graduates at ALL high schools in the state are entitled to attend UT at Austin. The policy is not perfect - there are real issues about the ability of the University to meet this requirement and still have a nationally and internationally diverse student body, but it focuses the issue in a way that prevents the deserving from the populous areas from being held to a much more restrictive standard that those from less densely populated parts of the state.
I personally know a minority student from out-of-state who was accepted to UVa. She was a very nice girl who had a private school secondary education. She had average abilities and average test scores. If she had been white there is no question that her application would not have even been considered. None of the white kids from the school were accepted. Some of these were exceptionally talented students–National Merit Scholars, winners of Mathematics competitions, etc. They did go on to some very fine schools–Duke, UNC, Cornell and Penn.
My question is this: why is UVa playing games with race? Do Virginia taxpayers know what is going on re: affirmative action at UVa and W&M? It isn’t pretty. Now we have Nelson Lopez who is essentially an anchor baby who feels entitled. Rules are bent for him by a corrupt UVa administration.
Setting aside all of the other points, which could be debated by far smarter people than me, can we agree on one fact: Nelson Lopez is a U.S. citizen under the law of this country. Are we to accept that it is appropriate to reduce one’s citizenship- a thing much prized by people who post here (and rightfully so in my humble opinion)- to that of some slur- anchor baby? Either the man is a citizen or not. There are no grades of citizenship, nor should there be. How can one rail against the bending of rules at UVa on the one hand and on the other argue that we must adhere to the rule of law in combating illegal immigration? This is truly a mess but we need not add to it further by losing our principles.
Junes_Reston said on 13 Apr 2008 at 6:33 pm:
“…If not, every parent in Northern VA has the right to know why - especially if one of their kids received the ‘thin letter.’”
Which my kid did - with a 4.2 GPA, 1800+ SAT (reading comprehension scores off the chart) Girl Scout Gold Award and lots of community and HS activities and sports.
Go figure.
Nothing makes me sicker than a qualifying future leader, being banned from his choice of higher education.
Whether it is color or circumstances or any number of things, no one should be pushed to do the wrong thing by a newspaper that is only trying to make money from headlines. It is all about greed!
Harry C
I can give your daughter one piece of advice (which I know she isn’t in the mood to consider):
It makes no difference where you go to college. Many friends my age (mid 20s) went to UVA, did well enough, and assumed that they would automatically get a 6 figure salary out of college. Thanks to their complacency, they are working in the service sector.
Likewise, I have friends who understood that college was actually the very beginning of life, not the end of it (try telling that to an 18 year old) and are now very successful and rapidly moving up the social ladder with little more than a NOVA A.A. and a GMU bachelor’s degree.
Simply put, by the time you have more than 2 years of work experience no one gives a crap where you went to school.
Anononymous is right; once you’re out in the real life it doesn’t much matter where you went to school. It’s what you do with the education you DO have.
Harry C - Guess you’ve got to go back to the old standard advice:
“Deal with it!”
OK - tell that to Nelson Lopez and let them switch places.
Joe should go to a historically black state university, such as Virginia Union or Hampton, get a full scholarship for doing so (they beg non-black kids to attend)… then, after no more than three semesters, apply to UVA & JMU as a transfer student, and leave the “race/color/ethnicity” box blank. There is no requirement to fill that in. Let the admissions office simply assume that it’s a black kid from a black school with straight A’s.
Then Joe can have the last laugh.
Besides, the dirty little secret behind university Affirmative Action admissions policies is that they (the schools) don’t give a crap how well the minority kids do once they’re admitted. The failure rate among minorities at top schools like UVA is astonishing. Kids like the WaPo darling, little son-of-illegals Lopez, get in to create “diversity” and then find themselves way over their heads, unable to compete with smarter and more motivated students who actually earned their acceptance. That’s why it’s so much easier to transfer into UVA. If Joe wants to graduate from UVA or JMU, he could quite easily take the spot of somebody like Lopez… after somebody like Lopez flunks out.
Nelson Lopez was accepted and has to deal with THAT.
IPublicus - It seems Nelson Lopez is both smart and motivated. Who knows, he might make it to graduation and, who knows, he might make a real contribution to the State and the country. Who knows?
And maybe Miss Harry C from Manassas will do the same after graduating from a school not of her and her parents’ preference. Who knows?
Young people are tough and they get tougher and better prepared for life when they have do deal with and, hopefully, overcome disappointments.
Capt America: I get your point but I disagree. In my opinion an anchor baby should have an asterisk after his name. His citizenship was gained via illegal activity. Ill gotten gains. Son of Sam law–a criminal is not supposed to benefit financially from his crime. And calm down, I’m not equating illegal aliens with murderers.
I’m sure you are aware that the illegal aliens say themselves that the first thing they want when they get in here is an anchor baby (their term) so they can then tap into all kind of benefits.
As far as I’m concerned, an anchor baby is not a full citizen. De facto, not de jure.
Monticup,
The law is the law right? Nelson is a US citizen by the law. Either you are a citizen or you aren’t.
Civis: Yes, you’re right—Nelson is a US citizen. That is why we must correct this law that creates a loophole for illegal aliens to produce anchor babies. That would go far in eliminating illegal immigration.
(It would be nice if Nelson would abide by UVA residency rules)
Illegal alien students have every right and opportunity to pursue higher education in their home countries ….and, for example, in Mexico, the world-class public university system is FREE for all Mexican nationals, in most of Latin America the university systems charge less than what an American student has to spend on college textbooks for a year! In the Phillipines..the main public university costs $7.00/credit hour…education is in English and any national with a U.S. high school diploma gets a waiver for entrance exams. These illegal alien students in the U.S. are being unjustifiably rewarded with access to our colleges, and their families are being given in-state college tuition subsidies/discounts that are not universally available to all American students. Illegal alien students should not be granted a waiver of the requirements that all foreign nationals seeking admissionn to a U.S. college/university must meet, namely, that they obtain a student visa, go through the criminal, medical and background screenings and prove ability to afford tuition at the institution to which they have gained admittance. Illegal aliens shouldn’t be put in a better position than foreign nationals here on student visas.
Capt. America said on 13 Apr 2008 at 11:07 pm:
Anchor baby is just what it means and what it is. Born in this country by illegals in order to give them an advantage over other illegals if they are ever caught. ANCHORS AWAY!
m.davies,
You have to remember that though a university in a Latin American country is technically less, dollar for dollar, socio-economic classes are greatly different in those countries as well. Yes, if I were making the equivalent of an American salary in Colombia, higher education costs would be minimal. But, the minimum wage in those countries is significantly less, again, dollar for dollar. I can make $10 an hour here working at McDonald’s, but working at a McDonald’s in Mexico would probably earn me less than a full dollar an hour.
Also, class status in Latin American countries is very different. A public university may be free, but it’s generally a very poor level of education. Public schools in Colombia are free also, but only the lower classes attend these schools.
I know for a fact that you simply cannot attend a US University without some semblance of either citizenship or a student visa, and generally (from people I know who attend college here on student visas) they don’t enjoy the same benefits as citizens do.
As far as the health issues, even Community colleges ask that you provide a certificate of immunization for the big three communicable diseases (chicken pox, TB and something else…).
A Correctly Informed: You have to remember that these illegal aliens and/or their anchor babies have no problem using fraudulent documents to acquire what they want. Do the colleges and community colleges run a check on the “papers” they are submitted.
Illegals aside, what is the big deal about getting into these universities right after high school? It’s much easier to transfer in from a community college with the required credits. The GPA usually doesn’t transfer so there’s another potential advantage. The Virginia 529 program equates 1 year of university with 3 years at a community college. On the 4-year University plan in the 529, go 2 or 3 years at NoVa, which eats up 1 year (or less) of the 529 benefit, and have 3 years left on the benefit when you transfer into a university as a junior. If the parents bought the 5-year university plan, the benefit could extend well into grad school or the unused portion could go to the next sibling.
As I see it, our tax dollars are funding our state universities. I want these schools to be for us (children of taxpaying Virginia residents). Our children have been exposed to enough diversity by being educated with illegal aliens for years. I don’t want to hear that less qualified students are getting to take up a slot that should have been available to the child of a Virginia citizen.
The problem with this issue is that deserving kids are not getting into our colleges and universities, while undeserving kids who can claim some racial, gender, ethnic, or religious preference and privilge are getting selected.
This is fundamentally against the US constitution and supreme court ruling, where only equal opportunity is guaranteed, but not “equal outcomes”. That is a supreme court ruling that was a result of kids getting preferential treatment by admission office Social Engineers and
“minority group rights” advocates to get into universities, because of “numbers” and ethnicity, and “diversity” (i.e a philospohy of “one of each kind”), rather than admitting students based on performance, achievement, skills, abilities, IQ (or SAT knowledge tests), and the civil and equal rights of individuals, not rights of “groups”
This is why there are no GROUP RIGHTS, only individual rights, based entirely on skill and ability of individuals.
There is a full range of stupid people, and brilliant people in every ethnicity. There is no “average” that deserves more privilige and preferrential treatment than a student that can be classified as a racial group, given preference over another “racial group” member with acceptance determined by numbers of student “groups” above the averages that seek racially balanced numbers or quotas (diversity and one of each quotas). That is why the supreme court ruled this way, racial balancing is illegal, diversity is illegal, it harms somes individuals, and gives preference and privilige to other individuals classified as memebers of a racial, gender or ethnic group illegally.
Someone (a supervisor who controls admissions policy) or several people in the UVA admissions office are still breaking the law because they believe in diversity and racial balancing and group rights (specificalll minority privileges and preference over majority grouped students.)
The senior admissions officer should be fired and held accountable for breaking the Supreme court ruling. EQUAL OUTCOMES CANNOT BE MANIPULATED BY NUMBERS, PREFERENCE,, PRIVILAGE, AND GROUP RIGHTS.