<p>@Bay
“There are low income students in the US who, for financial reasons, cannot study for a degree in their own countries”
That’s exactly what I mean.
Dario Guerrero is from Mexico, right? Well, let me tell you:
Some of the better schools in Mexico (like ITESM) are private and offer very little gift money in scholarships/fin aid, so those are out. Therefore, Guerrero would have been left competing against hundreds of thousands applicants for Mexico’s public universities, where only entrance exam scores matter. Although tuition exempt, those schools offer no stipends for living expenses. So there’s that.
In summary, Harvard was more generous to this kid than the universities in his home country would have been.</p>
<p>So what? Harvard is the most generous university in the world. There are thousands of low-income Americans who would love a full ride to Harvard, but didn’t get it. What point are you trying to make?</p>
<p>Oh my goodness, Bay, I am glad I am not you.<br>
" Oh stop being so naive. Do you really believe every illegal immigrant in the US is employed? And that all of the ones that do have jobs are honest about their status and have legitimate paperwork? Or are employed by Americans versus self-employed or working for other illegal immigrants? "</p>
<p>I’ll bite. No, not every illegal immigrant in the US is employed. And duh, of course most who have jobs don’t have legitimate paperwork - if they did, they’d also have job protections and the company or people would not hire them. And many do work for US citizens - it is difficult for an illegal immigrant to get a business license.</p>
<p>Obviously, there are unlicensed contractors, unlicensed landscapers, etc. out there. “Freelancers” are what my friend hires.</p>
<p>Bay, you truly believe that MOST illegal immigrants in the US are NOT here because they can find employment here?</p>
<p>And Bay, do you TRULY believe that an illegal immigrant who does not speak English would have ANY WAY to know about filing paperwork to work legally and so on? Do you think they cross the border and get a rulebook?</p>
<p>The problem is only endemic because of companies supporting illegal aliens. I like that my produce is cheap. But it is cheap due to child labor and illegal immigrant labor (read up on child labor at farms in the NYT in the past few weeks). </p>
<p>We can do as DrGoogle says, we can make it a point to not hire illegals ourselves. We do our own lawn, everyone else on the street hires landscapers, half who don’t have companies clearly marked on the trucks. We don’t have a maid or cleaning service. We oversee anyone doing work on our house and ask about their registration status.</p>
<p>But it is the big companies breaking the law and making this problem severe. Do you think my grandparents would have stayed if they could not find jobs? And they could not find jobs without employers, and those employers could not see their wares without being well-known and established in the community.</p>
<p>You are the one who is naive if you think the economic drivers of illegal immigration, and corporate America’s role in it, are immaterial, Bay.</p>
<p>I didn’t say economics wasn’t the driver of illegal immigration. I’d say it is 100% driving illegal immigration. America has the taxpayer dollars to provide free education, free healthcare, food stamps, scholarships for college, and good police services to make us safe. </p>
<p>I read the first two pages of this thread and decided I couldn’t be bothered going through any more drivel, so forgive me if one of the sane posters on this board has already said what I’m about to say, but:</p>
<p>Harvard is not in the business of serving the American public. That would be a public university. Harvard is in the business of fulfilling Harvard’s self-defined mission, which includes attracting the most promising students from all over the world, with a focus on Americans. Its admission standards do not discriminate on the basis of in-state vs out-of-state, and only discriminate between Americans and non-Americans in the sense that Harvard wants to have more of the former than of the latter. So what makes people think Harvard would penalize people for not being American citizens?</p>
<p>What I’m saying is that Harvard has no obligation, and no desire, to admit a ‘hard-working middle-class American kid whose parents played by the rules’ over a student it deems smarter, more accomplished or more promising, wherever they live or come from. That’s what you should tell your kids, really. That Harvard prefers illegal immigrants over them when the immigrants are better candidates. Isn’t America supposed to be a ‘meritocracy’? I thought all the well-fed suburbanites whining in this thread would be all over this.</p>
<p>In any case, there’s an argument to be made that admitting illegal immigrants to university does serve the American public, and I find it very compelling. I don’t think it’s easy to digest for people who don’t have a conception of civil society, though.</p>
<p>Rich people are so quick to convince themselves college admissions are victimizing them; it’s astounding.</p>
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<p>Yes, it has already been said. It would be nice if people would read the entire thread before posting.</p>
<p>Do you not forgive me then? :(</p>
<p>I will try. But I think your name-calling about others’ ideas was rude and inappropriate.</p>
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<p>You’re right that the international pool is actually a lot harder to get in than the domestic one. However, I don’t think illegal immigrants are even in the international pool–I think they are in the domestic one. If true, that is completely unfair to international candidates that didn’t break the rules.</p>
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<p>It’s hardly a meritocracy when the backstory itself, being an illegal immigrant, makes you a more attractive candidate. </p>
<p>Harvard has an endowment of over $30 billion dollars on which they pay no taxes. The tax money they don’t pay comes from the pockets of the citizens and legal residents at whom Harvard thumbs its elite nose. </p>
<p>Harvard is especially tolerant of internationals of any sort, in terms of FA:
<a href=“International Applicants | Harvard”>https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-process/international-applicants</a></p>
<p>Some other Ivies like Penn consider Canadian and Mexican citizens in the same boat as US citizens in terms of FA, but other internationals are at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>IMHO, the Washington Post picked the title of the article and is glamorizing it. His story is like this movie:</p>
<p><a href=“We're Not Married! (1952) - IMDb”>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045317/</a></p>
<p>where he was under the impression he was legal (his parents gave him a fake SS # to use - the parents committed a crime), and the people in the movie thought they were legally married.</p>
<p>This is a variation:
<a href=“Marriage License Never Filed, So Couple Of 48 Years Not Legally Married | HuffPost Life”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>and here is another variation:
<a href=“http://www.state.nj.us/health/vital/jerseycity.shtml”>http://www.state.nj.us/health/vital/jerseycity.shtml</a>
(seems that a guy was adding names to the Hudson County birth register and selling the info to illegals - so everyone with a birth certificate from Hudson County had to pay $25 to get a new birth certificate - in the mean time, they could not get a passport or other official documents - imagine if you found out your name was one of those added…)</p>
<p>I’m also wondering, does anyone know what his parents should have done when he was three and they overstayed their visa? Did they not have a relative to sponsor? Or did they find out what to do and they could not afford the fees?</p>
<p>For my one grandfather, he was on a tourist visa and it expired. War broke out where he was from, so he just did not return. He was never naturalized. Had no problem getting a job at a metal refinery and other places, except when he was on Relief for about five years during the Depression.</p>
<p>For my other grandfather, he flat out lied that he was born in NY and apparently no one cared to check on it. Both my grandfathers were in the draft, and one served in WWI. They were in the census as well. No one checked immigrant status when taking the census (census takers have enough problems).</p>
<p>As for: “free education, free healthcare, food stamps, scholarships for college, and good police services”:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I don’t agree 100% with educating illegal immigrants. And I’m a liberal. I also don’t agree that legal resident non-US citizens should go to our public schools, even if they are here legally, unless they pay exactly the same taxes and so on as US citizens do. However, there is a benefit from not having uneducated illegeals running around, the hope that like this kid they will contribute to society.</p></li>
<li><p>free healthcare - that’s 100% a public health issue, for the safety of US citizens. It’s bad enough having illegal immigrants around, but having them not take care of themselves increases the potential to spread disease. Do you really want that illegal maid your neighbor has to cough on her kids and give them antibiotic-resistant TB?</p></li>
<li><p>food stamps - non-citizens have only recently become eligible for SNAP. But it is a public health issue again, to keep kids and parents healthy because the government cannot handle the number of illegal aliens vs. the size of our country and government services available</p></li>
<li><p>scholarships - private scholarships are up to the college or agency - they can give a dog or a cat a scholarship if they’d like.</p></li>
<li><p>good police services - depends on where you live. “Good” meaning that the cops won’t turn you over to the narcotraficantes, yeah, we’re good for the most part. And some folks are completely fine with the horrible conditions in parts of Mexico, yet we shouldn’t offer refugee status to people from there.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Yes, and all of those wonderful free things we have in America were/are intended to serve the legal residents and visitors of our country. Because they are part of a patchwork of laws that includes border security and orderly immigration procedures.</p>
<p>Wait a minute, the poster that called us drivel, did you miss the UCSF school. It’s stupid to comment and insulting people for not reading the whole thread.</p>
<p>“Harvard is not in the business of serving the American public. That would be a public university. Harvard is in the business of fulfilling Harvard’s self-defined mission, which includes attracting the most promising students from all over the world, with a focus on Americans”</p>
<p>Does this mean that Harvard is above the US law?</p>
<p>Is it against the law to accept undocumented students?</p>
<p>My understanding is that federal law is silent on the issue of admitting undocumented students. Which means it is up to the individual states and universities to set their own policies in this regard. There is/was a law prohibiting states from giving benefits to illegal aliens that are not available to all US citizens. Some state universities, like in CA, got around this by establishing only a residency requirement for in-state rates. Immigration status is irrelevant, unless you are already here on a visitor’s visa, ironically. (The rule-followers get the raw deal again).</p>
<p>Pardon my ignorance then. I thought that intentional harboring of an illegal alien was against the law in the US. Unlike those schools that cannot ask about immigration status upfront, Harvard was well aware the the student was illegal - because he told them so.</p>
<p>That makes sense to me, too, Bunsen Burner.</p>
<p>Btw, Ghostt’s statement that you quoted is not accurate. He wrote: </p>
<p>“Harvard is not in the business of serving the American public. That would be a public university. Harvard is in the business of fulfilling Harvard’s self-defined mission, which includes attracting the most promising students from all over the world, with a focus on Americans”</p>
<p>Here is Harvard College’s mission statement: <a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/mission-statement”>Animal Magnetism - Harvard University, that includes:</p>
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</p>
<p>and says nothing about students from all over the world.</p>
<p>I did a quick google perusal of the harboring issue, and it looks like that area of the law is preempted by the federal government. In other words, the states have no authority to legislate or prosecute in that arena. There is a federal law against harboring here :<a href=“8 U.S. Code § 1324 - Bringing in and harboring certain aliens | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute”>http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324</a>, but it pertains more to transporting them and shielding them from detection. Even if the feds were to enforce this law against persons in the US, which I doubt, I’m sure Harvard has dotted every i and crossed every t to avoid violating that law, when it comes to admitting undocumented students.</p>
<p>Thanks, Bay. I am positive that if I, a private undividual, was giving assistance and shelter to an undocumented alien, the feds would be on my case if someone ratted me out. But I am just a private citizen and do not have the power and influence like Harvard does. Maybe their law school kids and profs ran all possible scenarios and came up with the conclusion that they would be immune. Or maybe they did not and simply want to make a public statement and some case law out of it? Personally, I think the kid did deserves to be legalized. Otherwise, it could imply that kids are responsible for the actikns of their parents - that’s a slippery slope. His parents, OTOH, are a different issue. It does not matter that they raised a responsible young man and paid their taxes - it is our duty to do so. </p>