California Dream Act goes to Gov. Jerry Brown

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Sacramento --

Undocumented college students in California would be eligible to receive publicly funded financial aid under a controversial bill that passed the Legislature on Friday and that now heads to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, who is expected to sign it.

The bill, AB131, known as the Dream Act, allows students who have graduated from high school after attending at least three years in California to apply for the Cal Grant program that pays for tuition, fees, books and living expenses for lower-income students.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, introduced the bill and said that it is necessary to ensure that California has an educated workforce in the future, including students who didn't come to the country by their own choice but excelled in school.

"We will need them for our future, for our position in the global economy," he said. "We don't have one student to spare."

The bill, which passed on a party-line vote of 45-27 with Democrats in favor, is the second piece of a package that includes a bill already signed into law by Brown to make undocumented students eligible for privately funded scholarships administered by the state's colleges and universities.

Both bills differ from a federal proposal with the same name; the state Dream Act does not provide a path to citizenship.

According to a legislative analysis, the bill would cost the state up to $40 million per year. Colleges and universities don't track the immigration status of students, but higher education officials have said that there are about 3,600 students who are undocumented or who have other residency issues in the California State University system, and as many as 642 in the University of California system and 34,000 enrolled in community colleges.

Prior to its passage Friday, the bill elicited a long and impassioned debate in the Assembly that often drifted into lawmakers expressing frustration about federal inaction on changes to the country's immigration policies and the state's ongoing budget shortfalls.

"Here today we don't have enough slots for all the students in California who want to attend our great institutions, there just aren't enough. So until the federal government makes immigration reform a priority and tackles that, what are we doing? We're offering false promises," said Assemblyman Curt Hagman, R-Chino Hills (San Bernardino County).

Hagman and other lawmakers have said that while students may get a college degree, businesses still can't legally hire them.

Immigrant rights advocates cheered the passage of the legislation and pressed for action on the federal level.

"As California sets once again the bar high for other states to follow, we commend the state's leadership and wisdom to see beyond an immigration status and proactively integrate immigrants. Let this vote be an inspiration for the federal government to update immigration laws once and for all," said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Cedillo said the federal government - including Presidents Bush and Obama - has "failed" on the issue, but said this bill should have an impact on that.

"This should move our leadership both in Congress and the White House toward a resolution of our immigration problems," he said.

E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/02/BA621KVPLM.DTL#ixzz1WvIZw7BX

Comment:

Comrades, Governor Brown has already stated he will sign it if it gets to his desk, which it will, so it's already a done deal.

The people of California have made it clear they do NOT want this act to become law. However, ZOG doesn't care what the people want. ZOG does whatever it needs to do in order to benefit itself and their Judeo-Capitalist masters.

How does it benefit them to send illegals to college? After all, college graduates won't want the low paying jobs that big business will be offering. True enough. But if an illegal gets his college diploma, he will qualify for citizenship more quickly than an unskilled worker, even though the bill doesn't provide a DIRECT path to citizenship.

The real infamy is that in the last year, California has cut disability, SSI payments two times, and cut dental and optometrist coverage from Medi-Cal. With the money they saved, they can now give it to the illegals. The reason is quite odious. To the state, these illegals are future productive workers. The elderly, and disabled are nothing but dead weight. Useless non-producers who do not pay taxes, yet take out of the system.

A person works hard all his life, or becomes disabled, some are work-related disabilities, and how are they thanked? They are cast off like flotsum from a sinking ship. How heartless can these scum sucking politicians be?

The other reason this act was passed is to build up the Democratic party. Every single individual who benefits from this, as soon as they eventually get their citizenship, will surely become registered Democrats. Once they graduate, they can take the citizenship test, become citizens, then they can sponsor their families to get their green cards.

Pretty slick, huh? The state acquires a few highly paid, highly skilled workers (the kids), a lot more low-paid unskilled, uneducated workers (the parents, uncles, aunts, cousins), and cuts back on payments to non-productive people (the elderly and disabled) to make up the cost.

In a National Socialist state, this would NEVER be allowed to happen. If a person works hard all their life in service to the community, it's up to the community to take care of them when they need it.

In ancients times, the elderly and disabled were turned out to die in the jungle or desert. We're more civilized today. Today the elderly or disabled White worker is just left to rot in abject poverty in the heart of our so-called affluent society. If this isn't a crime, I don't know what is.

Dan 88!