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.

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…).

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!

(It would be nice if Nelson would abide by UVA residency rules)

The law is the law right? Nelson is a US citizen by the law. Either you are a citizen or you aren’t.

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.

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.

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.

Harry C - Guess you’ve got to go back to the old standard advice:

“Deal with it!”

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.