California DREAM is Vetoed; Leftist Cries RACIST

While Republicans in the Senate have been giving Harry Reid trouble over the federal DREAM Act (finally, some backbone!), California Republicans have been waiting to see what Governor Schwarzenegger would do with this year's state version of the bill. On Saturday, he vetoed it.

Unlike the federal version, the California DREAM Act couldn't provide amnesty or amnesty-lite benefits. Instead, it was aimed at forcing California universities to give illegal aliens in-state tuition rates.

Pointing out that some illegal aliens already qualify for in-state tuition under existing law, Schwarzenegger cited (PDF) growing costs of higher education and the fiscal irresponsibility of putting the burden for a new entitlement on the state budget.

Of course, where there are Republicans acting on illegal immigration, there are leftists not far behind yelling "RACIST" as hard as their marijuana-addled lungs will let them. The name of this group caught my eye:

“The governor has just bowed to the racist wing of the Republican Party. California needs a larger and more diverse workforce to prosper and we can’t continue to relegate Latinos to second class status,” said Yvette Felarca, Northern California coordinator of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary.

Their faculty adviser really should have pointed out that names that fit on bumperstickers are more effective and less likely to make people snicker. (Yes, I realize that's a nation-wide activist group, but you just know there's a leftist faculty adviser hiding in the background.)

I think we must be making progress, though. Felarca did manage to limit her slur to just the "racist wing" of the GOP, thus implying that we're not all of us racists.

MORE: Leftists like Ms. Felarca really need to get a clue about this whole racism thing. Activists are just phonin' it in these days. Got an issue you need to raise money for? Just call racist. Want your name in the papers? Just call racist.

Here's a hint for the Felarcas out there: giving a group of people better (or worse) treatment on account of its race or ethnicity would be racist. Restricting a benefit on account of legal residency (so long as legal residency isn't itself restricted by race) has nothing whatsoever to do with race.

As much as Felarca would like to claim that Latinos in California are relegated to "second-class status," she's missed the point. Illegal alien Latinos have been denied a benefit (and all the other illegal aliens, too). To the extent she's conflated illegal aliens and Latinos, she's guilty of just what she accuses us: racism.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 11:48 AM

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