Texas. Gov. Rick Perry is a...

Well you fill in the blank. Words honestly fail me after reading this story.

DALLAS (AP) — More than 12,000 illegal immigrants, non-permanent residents or non-U.S. citizens paid in-state tuition or received other such financial aid at public colleges and universities across Texas during late 2009, the Dallas Morning News reported Monday.

The figures from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board show about 1 percent of all Texas college students, in the fall semester, benefited from a 2001 law granting such in-state tuition.

The law says students who are not U.S. citizens and want to seek the assistance must have attended school in the state for at least three years before they graduate from a Texas high school. Students also must file an affidavit saying they plan to seek permanent residency.

During the fall semester, 12,138 students benefited from the law. Texas awarded about $33.6 million in state and institutional financial aid to those students between fall 2004 and summer 2008, according to the newspaper.

$33.6 million that did not benefit American citizens, although they were all taxed to raise it.

Gov. Rick Perry, who earlier this month won the GOP primary, supports the law aiding illegal immigrant students. Perry, in a recent debate, said the students are on the path to citizenship.

Huh? Back the truck up, Bubba. They aren't "law-abiding". Our laws say that people need to stay OUT of America unless they apply properly and are granted permission to enter. If they are in our country in defiance of our laws, the only path that they need to be on is a path back across the border, either on their own or in an ICE bus with barred windows.

The Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas filed a challenge to the law in December.

"It's not like we're swimming in budget surpluses," said coalition attorney David Rogers, who maintains that taxpayers suffer because of the law. "It's the responsibility of the government of Mexico to educate Mexican citizens."

Wow--someone gets it. Let's hear that line again:

"It's the responsibility of the government of Mexico to educate Mexican citizens."

Fantastic! HE should be Governor of Texas.

University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas said federal law allows states to draft their own policies. "It is a matter for states to determine," said Olivas. "In-state status is a state issue."

Former legislator Rick Noriega, who sponsored the in-state tuition law, said that educating the students is an economic development issue.

"This is about access to higher education," said Noriega, now the president of Avance, a nonprofit organization that educates Hispanic parents on preparing children for school.

"The alternative is to slam the door on any hopes and dreams. How are they going to perform in high school if they don't even have a chance at higher education?" he said.

Again, the question isn't "how are they going to perform in [American] high schools...it's "why are they even in American high schools? Every kid there illegally and improperly dilutes the quality of education that our kids get...especially when the schools have to start repeating half of the lesson in Spanish every day. And someone please tell me why we should spend dollar one on giving Mexican or OTM kids any sort of advanced degree when they cannot even legally get jobs in America? And it's especially ludicrous when you consider that 17% of American workers today are unemployed or under employed, and here we are, trying to make outsiders competitive with those Americans in our own tight labor market!!!
Rick Perry is contemptible and a sell-out. WHY did Rick Perry's primary opponent have to be one of those nut-job 9/11 truther types?

Screw it--I'm moving to Texas and running for Governor. Then I plan to invade Mexico and set up a 100-mile wide buffer zone south of the Rio Grande which will separate my state and the rest of Mexico.

Maybe then at least, we'll have education money and classroom space sufficient for our own kids, and we won't have to put up with this or this on a continual basis.

Oh--and Mexico? Fly one more of those Mexican military helicopters over my border and see if you get it back.

It's times like this that I really miss President Eisenhower.

Eisenhower dealt with illegals successfully. Bush needs to take note.

How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico
By John Dillin
The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn’t the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border.

Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America’s southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.

President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today’s force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.

Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike’s official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals.

General Eisenhower, who was gearing up for his run for the presidency, said "Amen" to Senator Fulbright’s proposal. He then quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican ‘wetbacks’ to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."

Years later, the late Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower’s first attorney general, said in an interview with this writer that the president had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration when he took office.

America "was faced with a breakdown in law enforcement on a very large scale," Mr. Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint."

Although an on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest had become dependent on an additional low-cost, docile, illegal labor force of up to 3 million, mostly Mexican, laborers.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online, published by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, this illegal workforce had a severe impact on the wages of ordinary working Americans. The Handbook Online reports that a study by the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas in 1950 found that cotton growers in the Rio Grande Valley, where most illegal aliens in Texas worked, paid wages that were "approximately half" the farm wages paid elsewhere in the state.

Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers.

Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now."

Bill Chambers, who worked for a combined 33 years for the Border Patrol and the then-called US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), says politically powerful people are still fueling the flow of illegals.

During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower - if only for about 10 years.

In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin’ Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.

Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing’s close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

One of Swing’s first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.

Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.

By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas.

By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.

Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free.

Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south.

The sea voyage was "a rough trip, and they did not like it," says Don Coppock, who worked his way up from Border Patrolman in 1941 to eventually head the Border Patrol from 1960 to 1973.

Mr. Coppock says he "cannot understand why [President] Bush let [today’s] problem get away from him as it has. I guess it was his compassionate conservatism, and trying to please [Mexican President] Vincente Fox."

There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.