VivirLatino

Last Week I wrote about how some states were pushing DREAM Act like measures through their legislatures. One of those states was Colorado. However yesterday, the dreams of undocumented students in The Centennial State were squashed thanks to Democrats in the state senate joining with Republicans to vote against the Immigrant Tuition Equity Bill.

Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, said that granting students who are illegal immigrants in-state tuition was like saying “if their parents robbed a bank, their kids could keep the money.”

Though the bill would require students who get the in-state tuition rate to sign an affidavit stating they would seek legal residency, Sen. Mike Kopp, R-Littleton, said the affidavit “is worth probably less than the paper it’s printed on.”

In hopes of attracting more Democratic votes, proponents added an amendment that said the bill would only become effective upon passage of the federal DREAM Act. That measure being considered in Congress would provide a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who serve in the military or attend college in the United States.

It wasn’t enough. Democratic Sens. Morgan Carroll of Aurora, Jim Isgar of Hesperus, Moe Keller of Wheat Ridge, Linda Newell of Littleton and Lois Tochtrop of Thornton voted against the bill.

Carroll, after the debate, referred reporters to a statement on her website that said she could not support the bill “in a climate where the state is cutting or eliminating over $1 billion of benefits to the people and is facing a $300 million cut to higher education, which virtually ends higher education as we know it in the state of Colorado.”

Isgar and Tochtrop made similar comments about cuts to colleges, while Keller declined comment on her vote.

Newell, who was elected in November by a razor-thin margin, simply said “I listened to my constituents” when asked about her vote.

Read more…