I’ve written about the in-state tuition debate on and off for a long time. Too long maybe, because Thursday’s hearing before the state Senate Education Committee sounded to me a bit like white noise.
Yes, it’s a moral issue. Yes, we’re a nation of laws. Over the years few people have budged one way or another. The argument has become symbolic, an occasion for political theater.
Thursday’s hearing gave us the guy who felt it necessary to point out that although his last name was Polish — or Czech or Slavic, I don’t remember — he did not give it its original pronunciation because he was an American and his family believed in assimilation.
What this had to do with in-state tuition for students who are here illegally, God only knows. But if assimilation is his beef, you’d think he’d recognize the young people we’re talking about have assimilated. They want to go to college.
Windsor Mayor John Vazquez spoke in opposition too. I met the mayor after last year’s tornado. Nice guy. Go-getter. Not sure how he pronounces his last name.
These kids need to do what I did, he thundered at the committee hearing, and work hard to pay for college.
Now, there’s a solution. What’s one more law broken?
A high school senior spoke in favor of the bill. I was a child when my parents brought me here, she said; I had no choice.
You have a choice now, the guy behind me muttered. Go home.
All this was predictable. I waited to hear what Alex Cranberg had to say.
Cranberg is a free-market conservative. More libertarian than anything else and a big-time Republican Party donor. Bill sponsor Democratic state Sen. Chris Romer recruited him to the cause. It was a brilliant idea. Romer knows the debate, which moves to the Senate floor, must be taken out of its artificial confines as a liberal or conservative issue or as a matter of ethnic or social politics.
Romer gave the argument its poetry: “There is no upside to having an uneducated class of children in America. When you do not give people hope, they do hopeless things.”
Cranberg spoke of business and finance. “It will reduce taxes, stimulate spending, create jobs.”
I talked to Cranberg on Friday. “Some of the most intelligent people I know completely misunderstand this bill,” he said. “They think it’s some kind of a subsidy. It’s not. It’s not about trying to encourage anything but (bringing more money) to higher education and encouraging people to get an education.”
We talked about immigration law and labor markets and the mismatch between the two. “It galls me to see people who call themselves conservatives only look at the impact of illegal immigration on government as if only government mattered. You can’t live in this country without consuming, without paying taxes. There’s a benefit to our whole society, and most people know that,” Cranberg said.
Spare me, please, the “what part of illegal don’t you understand” missives. I will answer only by saying, “What part of ‘they’re not going “home” don’t you understand?’ ” This is home, and the more educated they are, the better off we are.
One of the girls I know in this situation put it this way: “It’s like having a biological father and a stepfather. Mexico is my biological father, but America is the father who raised me. I have assimilated this culture. It is part of me. I am part of it.”
I told this to Republican state Sen. Keith King, who voted against the bill because he thinks it offers “false hope” to students who may get a college education but still can’t get legal employment. That may be true down the road, but it is relevant today only if you believe affording children an education is a bad thing. I’ve met dozens of these kids. You may have too, but it never occurred to you that the girl in the ROTC uniform laden with ribbons is here without papers.
They’re the best and the brightest. They have persisted in their educations even as many of their classmates have dropped out.
So what do you tell them, I asked King. He said his answer doesn’t change. Until the federal government changes the law, the students are here illegally.
As much as I believe this issue has to be reframed so that some of the emotion is bled out, I do not want it to become so bloodless that we forget we are talking about young people who want only to better themselves and contribute to the society that has contributed to them. The girl I mentioned earlier? She’s 21. Her parents brought her here when she was 7. Her home country is an alien place.
If she could meet King and sit across from him, she would say this: “I’m not asking for welfare, I’m asking for an education. Whether or not I can use that education right away. I am like a person trapped in a room with no way out. Give me a window. I will crawl through.”
She graduates June 9.
Tina Griego’s column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com
