http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/09/colleges-across-country-give-new-perks-to-illegal-immigrant-students.html

A new fall semester is about to begin. And while American college students struggle to pay for their higher education and long to be the fortunate recipients of college scholarships, illegal immigrants find their path lined with institutionalized supports, loads of scholarship money — and a healthy dose of “go get ’em kid,” as they break U.S. law.

Just this May, former Secretary of Homeland Security and current University of California president Janet Napolitano announced a three-year commitment to support illegal UC students university-wide.

“We are committed to continuing a path forward for undocumented students at the University of California,” Napolitano said in a website message. “This funding will further strengthen the university’s undocumented student initiative, and help ensure that these students receive the support and resources they need to succeed.”

The article continues if readers want to visit the above website. Fox News goes on to protest this use of taxpayer and college funds.

As a former bilingual teacher, I’d like to weigh in on this issue. We are not talking about a bunch of young people who just arrived here from Mexico or Guatemala. For one thing, few recent newcomers have the English necessary to tackle college.  We are mostly talking about children who grew up in the U.S. educational system. In some cases, these children arrived here as babies. They may have no memory of their countries of origin.

These are the kids without social security numbers who may nonetheless have attended U.S. elementary, middle and high schools. They may have been among the best students in their schools. These would-be college students are likely to come from poor families.

I know their parents. I’ve been calling those parents for years, finding them in factories, restaurants and cleaning jobs. Sometimes I can’t find them because they are out working in fields or yards. These parents don’t have that social security number, either, but somehow they  find work. They work hard, too. Many of them have two jobs.

Readers, please explain this situation to people if you agree with me. These kids ought to get help with college. This is the only country many of them know. America will be better if we help these kids to fulfill their potential. Some of our best and brightest students are following parents into factory or yard work for lack of a social security number. We can do better by the kids who have been raised here and who have fought to achieve academic excellence.

We already stunt too much potential. Kids without numbers know that they cannot be nurses without that critical 9-digit number. They study medical billing instead. They know they can’t be teachers without that number. They take jobs in private preschools instead. They give what they are allowed to give, often not nearly as much as they might be able to give if we provided them a college education and path to citizenship.

Eduhonesty: Well, so much for tips for teachers today. Newbies might go back to last August in my feed if they are looking for tips. Last year’s August and September tips were especially geared to new teachers.

I had to take a day off from tips today, though, after I read this article. The text is inflammatory but, more importantly, the content slants the truth. The parents of these children are not living off the system. Without a social security number, they cannot. They are working. Sometimes they are working sixteen hours a day in low-wage, physically demanding jobs in the hot sun. They are taking tassels off corn. They are harvesting melons. They are putting small parts into other small parts while standing on their feet all day in backrooms without air-conditioning, hoping someday to get a job “on the floor” where the temperatures run in the seventies instead of the eighties or nineties.

When we don’t allow these children access to U.S. colleges, we condemn them to taking tassels off corn and working in backrooms. I’d like to suggest that America needs to be bigger than that. Do we want to create a class of indentured servants? Is that who we are?

A modern version of indentured servitude will be the de facto result of not allowing the children of illegal immigrants access to higher education.