OPINION:
The culture of lawlessness is alive and well in Washington. President Obama sets the tone with his health care law revisions, rewriting the legislation without bothering Congress. Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House, urges the president to ignore inconvenient provisions of the immigration law. She tells Telemundo, the Spanish-language TV network, that just being in the country illegally isn’t a sufficient reason to deport illegal aliens, the law be hanged.
Others are picking up on the tone. Illegal immigrants are taking to the streets demanding not only that the House enact the Senate-passed amnesty bill but that President Obama halt deportations with an executive order. Far from “living in the shadows,” illegals are running into the open, loud and proud.
For three hours on Monday morning, illegal aliens and their supporters staged a demonstration at a deportation office in Fairfax County, just off the Beltway. Chanting slogans, the protesters sat in the driveway of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office to prevent a bus from getting through. The demonstrators said they were trying to halt the deportation of illegals on the bus. “What do we want? Shut down ICE,” went the call-and-response. “When do we want it? Now.”
Seven college-age illegal-alien students filed suit Tuesday against the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia insisting that they pay only “in-state” tuition, like legitimate residents of the commonwealth. Giancarla Rojas, 19, a student at Northern Virginia Community College, wants to transfer to George Mason University, but says she can’t afford GMU’s $29,000-a-year non-resident tuition. The tuition rate for Virginia residents is $9,900, about one-third of the other.
She was brought illegally by her parents to this country from Bolivia when she was 13, Miss Rojas insists she’s entitled to the discount. U.S. citizens who cross the Virginia border (legally) from Maryland, West Virginia or North Carolina to attend a Virginia college would still pay the full non-resident rate. This requires those who follow the law to subsidize those who don’t.
Illegal aliens looking for cut-rate tuition could head over to Maryland, where voters last year ratified the legislature’s grant of in-state tuition to illegal-immigrant students. This renders the concept of citizenship meaningless. Why bother undergoing the lengthy naturalization process when the welfare, discounts, driver’s licenses and other freebies are available for the taking now? Encouraging lawlessness invites contempt for the law.
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