Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Noncitizens on scholarship?

Plan to check Millennium recipients a reasonable step

State Treasurer Brian Krolicki has announced that, for the first time, Nevada students applying for Millennium Scholarships funded with tobacco settlement funds will now be asked whether they are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.

Obviously, it is improper for an illegal immigrant to attend classes at a Nevada college or university, since it is illegal for an illegal immigrant to be here.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be any penalty -- even in theory -- for lying on the form. Mr. Krolicki was quick to acknowledge his department does not have adequate resources to conduct any background checks on the thousands of Nevada high school graduates whose 3.0 grade-point averages qualify them for a share of the diverted tobacco loot.

Still, Emmanuelle Leal, a member of the local Student Organization of Latinos, objected to the plan. Illegal immigrants who make it past high school and into college should not be penalized by being denied the scholarships, nor even by being charged the out-of-state tuition which a legal student from Utah or Idaho might be charged, he argues.

Taking away in-state tuition (and Millennium Scholarship) benefits from illegals now lurking in our midst who "hope one day to become U.S. citizens" is "nothing but wrongheaded thinking," agrees Tom Rodriguez, a local activist. "It's so absurd. It totally ignores the history of this country."

The history Mr. Rodriguez refers to would presumably be America's proud history of having the most relatively open policy of legal immigration in the known world -- a process which nonetheless now sees many would-be immigrants from China, Denmark, India, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Poland, and Zaire patiently waiting their turn in line -- often for years.

In fact, retired Las Vegas businessman Ken Record is more on the mark when he says, "When you put a stop to something like this, you remove a little bit of the current from the magnet that draws more immigrants to this country."

Actually, the kind of immigrants we want will still come, Mr. Record -- and plenty of them will be from south of the border. It's only the lawbreakers who will (hopefully) be dissuaded.

Mr. Krolicki's proposal is a good step, which should be eagerly embraced by the state's university trustees.

Down the road, a more rigorous process of confirming legal eligibility can be considered. In the meantime, at the very least, the presumption is created that those who are caught lying on these application forms owe it to the taxpayers to pay their tuition subsidies back.