Thursday, April 04, 2019






No Right to College for Illegal Immigrants

At a time when Americans believe immigration to be the most important issue facing the nation, the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that Georgia’s state colleges and universities can’t be forced to admit illegal immigrants as students. And that includes aliens who qualified under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program implemented by former president Barack Obama in 2012.

In an opinion handed down earlier this month, a three-judge panel upheld the right of the Georgia Board of Regents, which runs the state-university system, to verify the “lawful presence” of applicants before granting them admission as students to the “more selective schools in the University System.” Selective schools are defined as any Georgia college or university that “did not admit all academically qualified applicants” in the “two most recent academic years.” That applies to at least three state colleges, including the Georgia Institute of Technology, one of the best-known engineering schools in the country.

This policy denies admission to aliens who received “deferred action” under the 2012 DACA memorandum issued by the Department of Homeland Security. That memo provided what amounted to a temporary administrative amnesty to aliens who entered the U.S. illegally before their 16th birthday and met certain other criteria. The government agreed to defer removing DACA beneficiaries from the country under the exercise of “prosecutorial discretion.” But as the court pointed out, the DACA memo specifically stated that DACA recipients “are not considered lawfully present in the United States.”

Despite that qualification, in Estrada v. Becker, three DACA recipients who were denied admission to Georgia colleges filed suit, alleging that the board’s policy is preempted by federal law and violates their right to “equal protection” under the 14th Amendment.

Thus, the lawsuit dealt simultaneously with two important questions: Does DACA actually confer “lawful presence” onto illegal immigrants? And do states have a legal obligation to any illegal immigrants when it comes to a college education?

“Lawful presence” is a classification that designates whether a person who is not a citizen is legally in the United States. It is a status enjoyed by green-card recipients, visa holders, and others.

The plaintiffs in Estrada v. Becker claimed that DACA provides them with lawful presence, but the DACA memo explicitly states otherwise. It also says that it “confer[s] no substantive right, immigration status or pathway to citizenship.”

Under federal immigration law, simply living in the United States for an extended period does not entitle one to lawfully present status — a fact usually overlooked by DACA advocates.

Yet the students argued that the board’s policy conflicts with federal law because it creates a new alien classification. The court disagreed. It concluded that the board’s policy verifies lawful presence based on classifications established by Congress and written into federal immigration law. According to the court, the DACA program grants recipients nothing more than “a reprieve from potential removal.”

Given that no federal statutory authority exists for classifying DACA recipients as lawfully present, the plaintiffs also argued that the constitutional doctrine of preemption (i.e., federal law overrides state law) prohibits states from regulating a policy area that is within the authority of the federal government. Under the Constitution, the power to regulate immigration is exclusively a federal one.

Yet, as noted earlier, the Board’s policy creates no new regulation. It simply uses existing federal immigration statutes to “verify lawful presence, and it does not require a state agent to make any independent determination,” according to the court. DACA confers no residency status onto illegal immigrants and does not prohibit state entities from using existing federal statutes to shape their policies. Thus, there is no preemption.

The plaintiffs additionally alleged that their right to equal protection under the laws is being abridged, since their classification burdens a fundamental right, the right to an education. But as the court pointed out, the Georgia “policy deals with postsecondary education, and the Supreme Court has never said that education is a fundamental right.”

According to the Eleventh Circuit, the plaintiffs “may pursue postsecondary education outside these three schools, and the Policy in no way undermines appellants’ deferred action status.” Lawful-presence checks are rationally related to a government’s interest “in responsibly investing state resources” in residents who are most likely to remain in the state. Thus, states have no obligation to admit illegal immigrants — whether they are DACA-qualified or not — to their university systems.

Outside of Georgia, 18 other states are doing their best to expressly disobey federal immigration law by providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens who reside in that state. 8 U.S.C. §1623 prohibits states from providing in-state tuition rates or any other post-secondary benefit to an illegal alien if the same benefit is not available to a citizen of the United States. In other words, states such as California and Texas that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens while charging higher tuition rates to out-of-state students who are citizens are doing so in direct violation of federal law.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Justice Department has never enforced this provision against any state, to the detriment of the public. These states are encouraging illegal immigration and forcing taxpayer parents to subsidize the education of illegal immigrants while disadvantaging students who are citizens.

That is fundamentally unfair.

SOURCE 






University Students Support Socialism – Reject Redistribution of Their Own GPA

Redistribution has a corrosive impact on both ends. Recipients are harmed because they get trapped in dependency, and workers are harmed because taxes discourage productive behavior.

Yet young people seem susceptible to this ideology, even when they are among the main victims.

While it might be tempting to shrug and assume they’re hopelessly clueless, this video shows young people are quite capable of grasping why redistribution is a bad idea.


I’ve previously shared a similar video, as well as a couple of written versions of this redistribution challenge.

In this case, though, we have some additional analysis.

Here are some excerpts from the accompanying article:

“… for the first time ever, more young people say they’d prefer to live in a socialist country over a capitalist one. Whether it’s free healthcare, free college tuition, or universal basic income, students around America increasingly support higher taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for these progressive policies. 

But would they support similar policies if they had skin in the game? … Campus Reform‘s Cabot Phillips went to Florida International University in Miami to test the waters on a ‘Socialist GPA’ policy in which students with higher GPAs would be forced to ‘spread the wealth’ and give some of their GPA points to students with lower GPAs. Despite the overwhelming number of students who initially said they’d support socialist policies, few agreed to go along with such a plan.”

Interestingly, the students actually are quite perceptive when they apply incentives in their own lives.

“‘I’ve lost a lot of sleep so I don’t know if that would be fair,’ one student said, while another answered no because ‘I like, study all day for my grades.’ Yet another student, after expressing her support for socialism in America conceded, ‘I guess it would be kind of hypocritical for me to say no.’ Another student, trying to justify his refusal to abide by such a policy, said, ‘you study for your grades, and they reflect how much time you’re studying.’”

As a wonky economist, the first thing I wondered about is how young people would react if they were asked about a small amount of redistribution (say 1/10th of a point of a GPA) compared to a large amount of redistribution (a full point of GPA).

I’m guessing they would realize that the damage of the latter would be more than 10 times the damage of the former – which is exactly the same thing you find when you examine the deadweight losses of ever-higher tax rates.

Two final points.

First, many young people don’t understand socialism. They think it’s just a proxy for caring – or even for being sociable. It’s incumbent on advocates of freedom to help them understand the adverse implications (i.e., redistributing money is just as bad as redistributing GPAs).

Second, it won’t be easy to make an ethical appeal to young people if they perceive (and many do) that capitalism is the same as cronyism, which is why self-styled conservatives (or Trumpians) who support favors for special interests do a lot of damage to the cause of freedom.

P.S. Since they are huge net losers from the current system, young people should be very amenable to a message of genuine entitlement reform.

SOURCE 





'Major distraction': Australian private school dumps iPads, returns to paper textbooks

As classrooms across the country embrace digital textbooks, one Sydney school has declared the e-book era over and returned to the old-fashioned hard copy version because it improves comprehension and reduces distraction.

For the past five years, Reddam House's primary and junior high school classes have used e-textbooks on iPads. But the consistent feedback from the students has been that they preferred pages to screens.

Teachers also found the iPads were distracting and did not contribute to students' technology skills, prompting the school to announce that students should no longer use digital textbooks, and must revert to hard-copy versions instead.

"We hadn't completely gone away from hard copy," said principal Dave Pitcairn. "We kept year 11 and 12 hard copy. When [students] got to year 11, and now had the comparison between digital and hard copy, they preferred the hard copy.

"The ease of navigation through the textbook was easier with the hard copy. I believe they learn better the more faculties they use, the more senses they use in research and reading and making notes."

Teachers at the eastern suburbs private school, which regularly appears on the HSC top-ten honours list, reported that iPads were hindering learning.

"[Students] could have messages popping up and all sorts of other alerts," said Mr Pitcairn. "Also, kids being kids, they could jump between screens quite easily, so would look awfully busy and not be busy at all."

The school will also phase out iPads and begin a bring-your-own device policy with a preference for laptops.

Dr Margaret Merga, a senior lecturer in education at Edith Cowan University, said an analysis of all the research into differences in book formats has found that understanding improves when information is read in a paper rather than a digital format.

Research into why young people prefer hard-copy textbooks "points to greater perceived comfort, comprehension, and also retention of what's been read," she said. "Some have found that there's less immersive involvement [in digital text]."

A University of Maryland study in 2017 found there was little difference in the two formats when students were asked about the general themes of a text, but the printed version made them better able to answer specific questions.

The study's authors suggested print be preferred when an assignment demands more engagement or deeper comprehension, or if students - primary, secondary or tertiary - were required to read more than one page or 500 words.

As for the weight of the textbooks in backpacks, Mr Pitcairn said students could leave them in their lockers or use a digital version at home. "I've noticed that students prefer their textbook in both places," he said.

SOURCE  



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