A definition of demagoguery is when a politician knows something isn’t really true or fair, but continues to exploit it anyway.
So will Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman step up and admit they’re misleading California’s voters about college students who are also illegal immigrants?
Both have been bashing the students as a financial burden on taxpayers to prove their tough-on-illegal immigration bona fides to the party faithful. They both want to repeal Assembly Bill 540, which grants in-state tuition to some non-residents, including some illegal immigrants.
But as The Bee’s Susan Ferriss reported last week, those students represent a tiny fraction – 1 percent or less – of all students in all three of the state’s higher education systems. On University of California campuses, for instance, there were fewer than 2,000 students who were not state residents but were paying in-state tuition in 2007-08 – and UC says only as many as 400 were illegal immigrants.
So the savings from rescinding AB 540 would be far less than the candidates suggest, a minuscule portion of the higher education budget.
Many of the students were brought here as young children by their parents; even to be eligible for in-state tuition, they have to graduate from California high schools and must have attended for at least three years. And many of them will stay in California, so the state has a real stake in their education and future.
Poizner, in particular, isn’t letting the facts get in the way in his desperation to catch Whitman. He also wants to change federal law to bar the public school doors to illegal immigrant children. In a TV spot promising to end taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants, he rails against “years of liberal failure.”
“We all know California is heading right over a cliff,” Poizner says in the ad, as a car falls off a precipice. “Politicians have lacked the guts to tackle the problem.”
Whitman is no innocent on the issue, either. She says in her policy agenda pamphlet that she wants to ban illegal immigrant students from attending the University of California, California State University and community college systems. In their only debate so far, she went after Poizner on immigration when he criticized her for opposing Proposition 187, the draconian 1994 ballot measure that denied many public services and benefits to illegal immigrants.
This is a good test of the candidates’ character that voters can judge: Will Poizner and Whitman face up to the truth and engage in a serious discussion about immigration? Or will they continue to ignore the facts and appeal to voters’ worst instincts?
The early indications are not promising. We asked both campaigns if they would reconsider their stance in light of Ferris’ report. The answer was no. “Steve Poizner feels we must end taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens, including in-state tuition,” replied Poizner’s spokesman, Jarrod Agen.