I can’t for the life of me figure out how this is legal:
In the current race to the bottom to see which state can provide the most degraded and dehumanizing environment for undocumented immigrants, Arizona and Alabama have grabbed the headlines. But largely unnoticed, it is Florida, home to nearly one million Cuban refugees and their descendants, that has come up with perhaps the most bizarre and pointless anti-immigrant policy of all.
Beginning last year, the state’s higher education authorities have been treating American citizens born in the United States, including graduates of Florida high schools who have spent their entire lives in the state, as non-residents for tuition purposes if they can’t demonstrate that their parents are in the country legally.
Yes, you read that correctly – although when I first came upon a description of the policy a few weeks ago, I was sure that I had misunderstood something. It’s a basic tenet of equal protection law that the government can’t single out citizens for disfavored treatment without a good reason. The Supreme Court is serious about this, even ruling unanimously a decade ago that an Illinois village violated an individual homeowner’s 14th Amendment right to equal protection by demanding from her a bigger easement than it required of her neighbors as the price of connecting her home to the municipal water supply.
When it is no longer acceptable for people to pick on Hispanics and Gays, I wonder who the GOP will turn on next.
Benjamin Franklin
“When it is no longer acceptable for people to pick on Hispanics and Gays,”
Well, there’s always Marco Rubio and the Log Cabin Republicans….so they’ve got that going for them.
Mark S.
That seems really unconstitutional to me.
Brian S
I would say atheists and Muslims, but they already hate both groups.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
They’ll find someone. And probably paint them as terristhippies while they’re at it.
TheMightyTrowel
When it is no longer acceptable for people to pick on Hispanics and Gays, I wonder who the GOP will turn on next.Working class whites.
Culture of Truth
That was totally different. That was big government run amok.
srv
This is as much about benjamins as it is about discriminatin!
All those community colleges and universities that looked cross-eyed at you when you tried to register as out-of-state?
Not so tolerant anymore.
GregB
Well, you don’t know what you are talking about. Newt Gingrich’s secret weapon will be his outreach to Hispanics and they will all let bygones be bygones and vote eagerly for him and the GOP and the GOP base will gladly embrace their new found Hispanic fellow travelers.
chopper
what, doesn’t everybody carry around copies of their parents’ birth certificates? piffle.
stickler
Picking on Hispanics? In Florida? That sounds … counterproductive.
Unless the Cubans don’t think of the picked-on-Hispanics as THEIR kind. Are Florida’s Cubans that parochial?
Nikki
Hopefully, each other.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
Well obviously there are Muslims, but after that I say they go back to their roots and start over with black people.
Argive
Perhaps Floridian conservatives think that if they say “¡Viva Cuba Libre!” enough, the Cuban population will forgive them of anything.
Jewish Steel
Bloggers.
gbear
Women.
Argive
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
Chris Rock predicted it (skip to about 3:10).
TheWatcher
“When it is no longer acceptable for people to pick on Hispanics and Gays, I wonder who the GOP will turn on next.:
That’s an easy one……… Us.
BGK
@stickler:
Good God, yes. Even among Cuban immigrants, there’s a divide between the first wave which came in the early ’60s and the Marielitos of the early ’80s. As with many other things racial, this diminishes rapidly with age, though. Still, I’d venture to say Florida’s “Hispanic” community is more varied than Texas’s or California’s, as it’s got just about every Caribbean and central American nationality. In some ways, it’s a throwback to the southern and eastern European immigrant wave of the late 19th/early 20th century.
r€nato
I would hope that our judiciary is not yet so thoroughly hijacked by the right that they would allow this to stand.
When I applied for citizenship in another country, the two most important documents I had to provide were the birth certificates for my parents. I wasn’t even a citizen (yet)… and Florida is telling people who are already US citizens that that is not good enough to use the state universities which their taxes help pay for?
IANAL but I can’t see how this passes any sort of equal protection examination. If you’re already a US citizen, then it’s immaterial where your parents were born. This smells like an anti-immigrant movement lashing out at ‘anchor babies’, one of their pet peeves.
Dr. Squid
O Fark Florida tag…
peach flavored shampoo
If they’re non-resident residents of Florida, how do they get Florida driver’s licenses?
Moreover, exactly what state are they residents of?
Villago Delenda Est
@stickler:
This is why the GOP’s hope that Marco Rubio will save the Hispanic vote for them is forlorn.
There are class issues going on within the Hispanic community that the GOP, naturally, is tone deaf to.
The Cubans who fled Castro were pissed because he was taking their peasants away from them. “Freedom” had nothing to do with it.
MattF
But don’t you realize that elderly, white, Anglo-Saxon fundie Christian southern men are a majority? Silly Cole.
Southern Beale
Well, Tennessee just denied a homeless person a free voter ID because, you know, homeless people shouldn’t be allowed to vote! And last night I read that Alabama’s “show your papers” law netted a Japanese Honda executive. So if you’re talking race to the bottom, let’s just put the entire South in there, shall we?
joeyess
I have no idea when they’ll give up the ghost on Hispanics and Gays, but knowing that they bow to their christian overlords when it comes to policy and pandering, I suspect that they will blame one group for losing the war on Teh Gays……. Those godless, secular atheists.
I would now like to let them know that I do have a gun and will never bow to their phantasm.
Social Outcast
It’s not even worth talking about how stupid this is on the merits, but note that the GOP decided to screw hispanic kids in a swing state right before an election year. Brilliant!
You can tell that Karl Rove and his ilk have lost control of their party.
Brachiator
Where you been? This is similar to controversy over the California Dream act.
But as you note, this is singularly obnoxious, and clearly unconstitutional, because it makes Latinos into second class citizens.
Also too, limiting the rights of a citizen because of the status of their parents is a new, ugly, despicable version of the goddamm Grandfather Clause.
God damn this GOP. God damn them all to hell (with apologies to Planet of the Apes).
El Tiburon
Half-whites and Jews. Then, what to do with the half-whites and Jews? If only there was some kind of final solution…
JPL
The activist court will strike this down. Those disaffected by this law can legally become President of the U.S. but not be considered a legal resident in the state of FL with rights.
SRW1
Don’t worry. There’s always the womens.
ETA: I see that gbear @15 preempted that thought.
burnspbesq
The predominant mode of analysis in equal protection cases is to ask whether there is a rational basis for the seemingly discriminatory classification.
Darned if I can see one here. There are all sorts of non-discriminatory ways to keep non-residents from getting to pay resident tuition.
Mattminus
So does everyone have to prove that their parents are in teh country legally or is it only the chromatically suspect?
Face
Y’all are missing the Cuban aspect:
Cubans are declared automatic cits the minute they touch dry land. If they come without their parents, it would be natural but entirely normal for them to be cits, but their parents arent. Yet they’d be hosed by this policy. I imagine the majority residents of North Miami and its suburbs would be furious.
And they vote in huge numbers. At least they will, unless they’re deemed non-residents for purposes of voting, too.
joe brown
It’s not remotely legal, and more proof that the deep south still can’t govern itself.
Ruckus
When it is no longer acceptable for people to pick on Hispanics and Gays, I wonder who the GOP will turn on next.
I’m going out on a limb and say, as they have eviscerated just about every other group, old people.
Oh wait…
IOW How can elections be won with 1%?
Quaker in a Basement
Hispanics and gays are only marginally profitable. The core of the business has always been–and will always be–discrimination against black folks, women, and the poor
Wag
@Southern Beale: 0
The first one cought up by the law was a Mercedes-Benz Executive, thus proving that even Aryians aren’t safe from the GOP.
Pillsy
Why would you think that Florida Republicans care about legal? They elected Rick Scott!
schrodinger's cat
Then they will do away with elections, that is the next logical step after voter disenfranchisement.
Warren Terra
Leaving aside the whole citizenship/racism question, what is the legal basis for treating adult citizens differently based on their parents’ status?
And I ask because it’ important to remember that this is something we do systematically at the college level, when it comes to student aid and tuition levels. Harvard, for example, has a policy of charging no tuition for students from a household of below a certain level of income, with a sliding scale thereafter – and yet, the student is an adult; why is it Harvard’s business how much money their parents make?
Linda Featheringill
The sins of the fathers?
Oh, please don’t let me be held responsible for my father’s sins, which were dark and plentiful.
Why should anyone else have to pay for the transgressions of their parents?
The Ancient Randonneur
Yep, back to the black folks. Today is the 56th anniversary of Rosa Parks not giving up her seat on the bus to a white man. What better way to honor her memory.
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: I no longer engage people like you because, much like the rightwinger talking points about liberals, your leftwinger talking points about Cubans are cast in stone. BUT… no. It wasn’t about taking peasants away from them. The majority of Cuban immigrants (including my family) were middle and working class who saw a great deal of their world go to hell in a hand-basket. It’s a complicated issue, and I despise the easy dismissal by people who hate being dismissed as “hippies.”
But as to the current conditions: Cubans are a rather mixed lot. Not only is the there the old/young break and the older immigrant/newer immigrants break, but also the Florida/other states break. Rubio is probably assured a sizable part of the Cuban vote, especially if he’s nominated for VP. But not anywhere near as large as the GOP expects it to be.
jibeaux
@Brachiator: It’s different in that Dream Act legislation, federal or state, is generally for non-citizen children (who were brought here through no volition of their own). To require CITIZEN students to prove the citizenship of their parents is completely absurd and I can’t imagine how it would be constitutional.
Emma
@Face: Small correction. They are not considered automatically citizens. They are considered automatically legal immigrants.
SFAW
The Jews. Always the Jews. Remember the words of Tom Lehrer.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my wife was surprised at my level of hatred for Teh South. It’s so bad, that, when that idiotic “What could be better than a vacation in Alabama? Well, what about Mississississippi? And don’t forget Georgia!” commercial comes on, I switch stations immediately. It’s shit like this “law” which only reinforces that sentiment.
I wish they would all f’ing secede already, and take all the neo-Galtians with them. Then, the country could get back to work, could (possibly) thrive again, and we wouldn’t have to deal with all those traitors on a daily basis.
Sorry for the rant, my meds haven’t kicked in yet.
Malaclypse
Beginning last year, the state’s higher education authorities have been treating American citizens born in the United States, including graduates of Florida high schools who have spent their entire lives in the state, as non-residents for tuition purposes if they can’t demonstrate that their parents are in the country legally.
Wow. You know, 76 years ago, my mom was born in what was then the Belgian Congo to missionary parents. I truly don’t know if I could prove her citizenship.
SFAW
They already have, where have you been?
Or are you telling us that the 99% are currently getting exactly what they want from our elected “leaders”?
schrodinger's cat
@GregB: Newt’s idea, is not as wonderful as it sounds since it offers no path to citizenship. It will create a permanent underclass of people tied to the whims of their employers.
Mark S.
God damn. The last time I looked at colleges, the out of state to in-state disparity was 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, not 5 to 1. Who the hell would pay that much to go to University of
FootballFlorida?The Moar You Know
@Emma: Trying to debate mainstream leftists about Cuba is useless, as you say. I had an interesting moment in a college class lo these 20 years ago where the dipshit professor was pontificating on all the great blessings that Castro had bought to “his people” (might think about why you’re using that possessive, professor) whereon a young lady about my age stood, and in a voice shaking with rage, told the professor that Castro From Who All Blessings Flow had murdered every member of her family. She was the sole survivor, simply because the thugs didn’t quite have the qualms to bayonet a young girl. Then she told the professor to fuck herself. A teachable moment, at least for me.
They weren’t rich. They were just on the wrong goddamn list at the wrong time.
The Cubans who had peasants taken away from them at most numbered no more than a couple of hundred. Everyone else? Collateral damage, to use a euphemism that I loathe.
FormerSwingVoter
They’ll probably move on to the new and trendy group to hate while leaving hispanic and gay Americans alone. Much like they’ve done with women and African Americans.
Heh.
schrodinger's cat
Wasn’t there some horror story of a citizen being in a deportee prison because he couldn’t prove his citizenship, since he had lost or misplaced his birth certificate.
Social Outcast
@The Moar You Know: And as we all know, the Batista regime never murdered anyone. All that thuggery began with Castro.
cckids
@Malaclypse: I was just thinking, with my first kid in college, that I’m lucky I don’t have to prove my citizenship. My mother died not long after I was born & my dad (with 3 kids under the age of 4) fled back to his home state to get some family help. Many docs & other things were lost. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen my birth certificate, tho I’m sure it exists somewhere.
Ruckus
@Warren Terra:
Isn’t Harvard a private school?
And isn’t this policy theoretically about allowing them To attend, not exclude them?
Ruckus
@Linda Featheringill:
As I understand it christans are still supposed to be paying for the sin of nailing someone to a cross, centuries ago.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@schrodinger’s cat:
Newt’s idea, is not as wonderful as it sounds since it offers no path to citizenship. It will create a permanent underclass of people tied to the whims of their employers.
To Newt, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Roc
Well, they never really gave up discriminating against Women and African Americans. So why would legal protection for hispanics and gays matter?
Poopyman
My bet is on the unlanded peasants. That will be after the great majority of us are found to somehow be illegally occupying residences that belonged to the bank all along. Feudalism! Or whatever it’ll be called after Frank Luntz polls it.
Seems a stretch, I admit. Then again, I never expected us to be where we are today. Truly, anything is possible in the future.
beltane
I am not Hispanic but I am the daughter of an immigrant so this give me another reason to hate on that vile dystopian state that hangs off the corner of this continent like a goitre. All those RealAmericanRepublicans out there, the intellectually challenged backwash of northwest Europe, must be very insecure in their alleged superiority if they have to devote so much effort to rigging the playing field in their favor.
If Andrew Sullivan were truly as bold as he thinks he is, he would conduct an honest examination of the intellectual insufficiencies and moral bankruptcy of white conservatives.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Even in the conservatard world they still aren’t won with 1% of the vote, but they are paid for by 1%.
If, and that’s a huge if, enough people realize they are voting against their own interests, and that is screwing them, those votes won’t be purchased.
A boy can dream can’t he?
beltane
@Poopyman: That’s what their brilliant “We are the 53%” campaign was all about. These nasty dumbasses are proud of the fact that the only thing their kind is good at doing is creating poverty and misery.
Brachiator
@jibeaux:
I noted the difference. This is why I referenced the Grandfather Clause, and the despicable notion of making a citizen’s rights contingent on the status of their parents.
The clear intent of this legislation is to revisit the idea of birthright citizenship.
The loose similarity to the Dream Act is that angry Californians refuse to hold the children of illegal immigrants blameless, or to consider the practical problems involved. A high school student could have been brought to the US as an infant and have no idea that his or her parents were illegal immigrants. But the angry mob trying to get the Dream Act repealed want to make sure that the children are punished along with their parents. The Florida law is similar in this regard, but obviously worse in that it seeks to negate citizenship rights.
Villago Delenda Est
@Emma:
Yeah, right. “Middle Class” is a relative term when you’re comparing a first world country of the 50’s with a third world country of the fifties. That “middle class” was easily in the top 5%. Which meant that a revolution about the rest of the population WOULD strip them of everything they had. Which was the entire point. Again, we’re seeing inequality of income and inequality of opportunity. That’s what creates the conditions for armed revolt.
The current Hispanic immigrants are not in that rarefied group. THAT is what creates the class difference that the GOP ignores, at their peril. Which is why Marco Rubio won’t appeal to Hispanics who came from Mexico or Central America. They are fleeing the sort of conditions that Castro’s revolution was, at least nominally, addressing.
Roc
nm. I see @FormerSwingVoter covered that.
jibeaux
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, there’s Mark Lyttle, a mentally handicapped dude from North Carolina. Who was deported to Mexico for pretty unclear reasons, as he doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish or any other language of Mexico, and he doesn’t look Hispanic.
SFAW
Excellent! Way to non-answer Moar’s point. “Well. Dictator X was just as bad if not worse, so that whiner’s rage was mis-directed!”
Do you ghostwrite for Erick Ericksdottir?
SFAW
My point was that whether they had 1% or 51% of the votes, the 1% still won the election(s).
But you knew that.
And, yes, you can dream – but I don’t want to see the disappointment on your face when you wake up.
jibeaux
@Brachiator: This is true. I’m a big supporter of Dream Act legislation, although unless it’s in conjunction with more comprehensive immigration reform, it’s very limited, because great! You’ve got your in-state degree with no legal authorization to work here!
But it seems to me there is a huge difference between the two scenarios in terms of their constitutionality.
Warren Terra
@Ruckus:
1) No, this is not about allowing people to attend. This is about eligibility for financial aid (in the case of Florida, a huge in-state tuition discount). That’s why I was asking: it seems to me the same legal mechanism is in effect.
2) Yes, Harvard is a private school. I chose it because I knew the rough outline of their financial aid program (I know many, many others exist, including at public schools, but know nothing of their design) and because I was trying to get at the central legal mechanism without some of the freighted issues of race, nationality, and penny-pinching state education budgets. Also, I’m not sure their being private would allow them to discriminate.
I’m still genuinely curious here: what’s to stop an eighteen-year-old from declaring legal independence and refusing to declare anything about their parents? And I mean both at Harvard (where the kid of wealthy parents could thereby save the family huge sums) and in Florida (where the kid of hardworking undocumented immigrants could in theory save the family tens of thousands, balanced against a couple of thousand of tax deduction for a dependent). How does the school have any right to know anything about the parents’ circumstances, if the adult college student says it’s not their problem?
Martin
They don’t go far enough, IMO.
In-state tuition should only be available for those who can prove none of their ancestors immigrated to Florida. Unless you’re a descendent of either the indigenous Calusa or Canaanite tribes, who obviously first settled the state, you’re just a dirty interloper.
Redshift
I think the only reasonable conclusion from Rick Scott’s overall policies is that he’s trying to solve unemployment through massive stimulus spending defending against lawsuits.
Martin
@Warren Terra: Harvard can’t discriminate on account of them being recipients of federal financial aid.
Emancipation isn’t recognized by the Dept of Ed. In order to be able to do what you describe, there’s a range of conditions that you can meet (only need to meet one). If your parents are deceased or are a legal ward of the court, then you’re clear. If you’re in the military or a vet you are in the clear. If you’re over 24 you’re good. The easiest solution, though, is to get married. And in MA, you don’t even need to worry about finding the opposite gender. Just marry your roommate. Problem solved.
kindness
Liberals.
Oh and btw, Florida law DOES treat Cubans differently from all other Hispanic groups. You land in Florida as a Cuban you get an immediate Green Card. You land in Florida as a Dominican Repub, Mexican or Puerto Rican they put you right on a boat back. Cubans love this. They don’t care about the ‘other’ hispanics.
Mitch Guthman
It’s been a long time since the GOP focused on hating Jews and blacks, which are always big favorites with the Tea Party/John Birch Society wing so that would be my guess.
Joel
@stickler: Probably.
Based on this Pew report, Cubans are 49% Republican, 24% Democrat by party affiliation, which is a more conservative split than non-hispanic whites, for example. Non-Cuban hispanics basically show the reverse split.
schrodinger's cat
Guess what the lip service GOP pays to legal immigrants or those who want immigrate legally is just that, lip service.
A bill that would decrease somewhat, the interminably long waits immigrants from India and China in EB-2 and EB-3 categories (employment based visa categories for skilled immigrants) face, by eliminating country quotas, is going to languish in the Senate. Senator Chuck Grassley has put a hold on it.
NCSteve
@Warren Terra: Well, a) Harvard isn’t the government and isn’t run by the government so they can do that if they want to, b) being born rich isn’t a constitutionally protected class, and c) IF THERE’S MORE THAN TEN TUITION-PAYING UNDERGRADS AT HARVARD WHO ARE PAYING OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS I’LL EAT MY FUCKING DESK BLOTTER SO OF COURSE THE PARENTS FUCKING INCOME IS RELEVANT!
Hope that clears that up for you.
Svensker
@Warren Terra:
Schools don’t care if the kid is independent or not. If he or she has parents (or even grandparents) who seem wealthy enough to fork over, the schools want the family to do that.
NCSteve
Um, it isn’t legal. It isn’t remotely legal. There might be a federal judge somewhere in the country appointed by Bush II or by Reagan and becoming senile, who’d uphold it but I doubt it. This is the kind of easy call that lets even the most crusty, angry, Fox loving Republican federal judge feel like he’s doing right by the Constitution.
lacp
@kindness: Since Puerto Ricans are American citizens, I’m pretty sure they don’t need green cards and don’t get deported.
Martin
@Svensker:
It’s not the schools, it’s the US Dept of Ed. They set the rules for eligibility. Emancipation is covered by state law, the Feds need not yield to it, and if you think about it, the moment you turn 18 you’re automatically emancipated so the entire financial aid/support system would instantly collapse if emancipation were recognized.
Warren Terra
@Martin:
Thanks for your informative response.
Does this also work in Florida? Could the adult citizen child of undocumented immigrants “marry” someone in order to save $22,000 in tuition under Scott’s proposed rules? If so, it would be entirely in keeping with the Right’s policy of promoting and “defending” marriage while eroding its true meaning as a lasting, loving bond between two consenting adults.
trollhattan
Waaay O/T but can somebody remind me again what the hell we’re trying to achieve in Afghanistan?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15991641
Martin
@Warren Terra:
It might work. To the feds you’d be independent and wouldn’t need to provide information about your parents any longer. Florida is bound by that. As to the determination of residency, that happens at the state level, so they could say that failure to provide info on your parents makes you ineligible for resident tuition, but I have a hard time imagining that would fly and could put their eligibility for federal aid at risk. I think once you are deemed independent by Dept of Ed, parents are off limits – full stop.
Catsy
@r€nato:
DING DING DING DING DING!
A winnar, it’s you.
Schlemizel
@stickler:
BOY ARE THEY parochial! When I lived in FL I had several friends who were Cuban but either American born or very young when they got here & they joked about how bad the Cubans treated other Caribbeans & Hispanics.
I came to believe that was because most of the ones in FL were from the wealthy land owner class of Cuba. They were also very color aware. My best friend there told me the story of calling his folks from college to set their minds at ease because he was dating a Cuban girl. He said his mom had only one question “Was she a white Cuban or colored?” He was dumbfounded.
They create a lot of tension in FL but there will be hell to pay if those people ever get to go back to Cuba. Its a good thing for all involved that they are getting too old.
PGE
I expect them to bring back an oldie-but-goodie to please the evangelicals, eventually: Catholics, or should I say “Papists”. And, frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to go after left-handed people, if they ever run out of other groups to hate.
Brachiator
@jibeaux:
Yes, very true. Of course, the other problem is that “comprehensive immigration reform” can mean almost anything. To many conservatives (and maybe some liberals), it’s a code word for “amnesty” and “millions of potential Democratic Party voters.”
Bago
@Warren Terra: You know, that kind of statement makes heritage an interesting question. The impetus for achievement can be fickle, especially given the variance in parental assessment. My sibling and I are successful despite our parentage, while things like the third O’Keefe are lionized in certain media circles.
It makes you wonder why the heritage foundation isn’t treated as some sort of extended dick joke.
daveNYC
Jews, the clasics never go out of style.
Green cards come from the feds, not the states.
Don
The really nutter thing about this as a dividing line is that Floridians don’t pay a state income tax. So the only possible way you might justify using this method of drawing a line – the questionable assertion that a non-citizen is less likely to be paying into the taxation system that funds in-state tuition rates – doesn’t fly here. You’re no more able to dodge sales taxes as a non-citizen than you are as a citizen.
Now, you might be less likely to be a property owner if you don’t hold legal citizenship but that’s not a requirement for in-state tuition.
Pillsy
@kindness:
What on Earth would a Puerto Rican need a Green Card for?
Mary
@Warren Terra: I don’t know for sure about whether being married would have an effect in Florida, but states are allowed to impose their own criteria for determining who qualifies for reduced in-state tuition. That is not to say that Florida’s current policy is legal or constitutional – it just means that states’ policies do not necessarily need to track with the policies that dictate federal financial aid.
Regarding Harvard, as a private institution they are certainly within their rights to grant tuition breaks to individuals who can show that they require financial assistance. One way to do this is to show that your parents income is below a certain threshold. There are probably other ways you can do this, but ultimately the imposition is on the student to show the need for assistance.
Don
I don’t know when you last looked but it certainly jibes with the diminishing support higher ed gets per student. When I worked for Miami-Dade Community College in the early 90s there was discussion of the diminishing share of a student’s per-credit-expense that the state was picking up.
As I recall it was just then dropping below the 50% mark and had been on a downward trend for a while. I don’t find it remotely unlikely that it might have made it down to 20%. Here in Virginia the contribution from the state has fallen every year for the last four (the only ones where it’s been personally significant to me) and we as a state are nowhere near as bad off, revenue-wise, as Florida.
schrodinger's cat
I don’t remember where I read this, but for the GOP base the most important issue this election cycle is immigration. Apparently immigrants is stealing our lunch and drinking our milkshake, no can has. Case in point Rick Perry’s down slide started when he articulated his sane position on the DREAM act.
Gromitt Gunn
@Martin: Are you unaware of how the FAFSA works? Your questions really only make sense if you’re completely ignorant of the overall structure of Financial Aid in the US.
Gromitt Gunn
Grr. Sorry. It won’t let me edit my prior comment. Was directed to Warren Terra, not Martin. Damn you, iPhone!
Schlemizel
@SFAW:
I have been trying to resist hating the South for some time now but losing ground. I am able to mostly limit it to the Civil War: Its too bad Lee, Davis & the rest did not get the treatment reserved for traitors at the time – Sherman stopped too soon, things like that.
It really isn’t fair because there are some beautiful places and wonderful people in the South but damn they make it hard to want to have them as part of my country.
PurpleGirl
@stickler: Yes, Florida’s Cubans can be that parochial.
Warren Terra
@Don:
Your facts are right, but your inferences are backwards. With a smaller and smaller portion of the per-student budget coming from state funding, the logical consequence should be a decrease in the subsidy provided to in-state students, and so a decreasing difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition prices. Not, as seen here, the reverse.
Schlemizel
@Warren Terra:
When filling out the FAFSA with my kids I was upset to find that my son who was still living at home & under my support was considered on his own because he was 25 but my daughter who was living in here own apartment, had a good job and was taking care of herself was not because she was only 23.
Naturally, with our income layered over hers there was not much aid but the boy sort of made up for it. Still the reality of support never entered the equation.
SFAW
I realize my views are not necessarily those of the majority of commenters here. And I wish conditions were such that I would feel like a complete asshole for hatin’ on them as much as I do. (As opposed to all the other reasons that I’m an asshole, of course.)
But every time I try to see the less-than-worst in them, they keep giving me more reasons to hate them.
There’s some management theory that says, in effect, if you expect the best of people, they’ll rise to the occasion, etc. No matter how many times I think it can’t get any worse, vis-a-vis Teh South, they keep proving me wrong.
It’s kinda like John’s saying: “Peak Wingnut is/was a lie”.
Karen
@Mitch Guthman:
No, no, as long as the GOP needs to slaughter Jews for the end of days in Israel, they have to be nice to us.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
That was a good one!
Maus
@stickler: Yes, absolutely. The old-school Cuban right-wing guard dislike Central Americans, South Americans, Dominicans, and even Cubans who came over on the boatlift.
They consider themselves hispanic when it comes to minority benefits from the Federal Government, but they’re not “those kind” of hispanics.
They also have opinions on blacks and Haitians, but that’s not really relevant to this topic.
Menzies
@The Moar You Know: & @Emma:
How about debating a Cuban?
I sort of straddle the line between the two. On the one hand, yeah, the landowning class in Cuba wasn’t huge and I don’t think the impetus behind the nostalgia is rooted in wishing that they had their peasants back. On the other, much of my Cuban family fits the exact stereotype of the “upper middle class” Cuban exiles who got out of the country while the getting was good. A number of them were either born in the United States or had previously acquired American passports or visas.
Now, this generation (the “old” one Emma describes) are mostly doctrinaire Republicans who couldn’t see the merits of liberal policy if it bit them on the nose while wearing neon lights and a Dick-Tracy-yellow fedora. They’re extremely parochial in their views, they have an amazing propensity for saying incredibly racist shit (calling Obama the N-word has happened more than once), and half the time are obsessed with proving how much more awesome they are than the rest of the Hispanics.
The two outliers, ironically enough, are my grandmother and grandfather, two of the oldest among them. My grandmother hasn’t ever been a liberal, and she doesn’t vote anyway since she lives in San Juan, but she went for Obama hardcore in 2008 and she’s usually the first to defend him and his record against the other ones.
My grandfather used to be an intellectual who was involved with the early Communist movement in Cuba and who served as a character witness at the 1959 trial of Huber Matos. (Matos himself later credited him and others with saving his life.) Even years later he’s still convinced that while Castro’s a douchebag (his standard name for him was “the Cuban Rasputin”) Batista was no better.
So I guess what I’m saying is this: I have an extremely jaundiced view of most of my Cuban family. The majority of them did not suffer through the actual phase of arrests/tortures/executions/murders and had options early on to get out, but act as though they went through the worst. (Another part of my family did, staying in Cuba until the 1990s, and they have my infinite respect, even if I completely disagree with them politically.) That annoys me because they dismiss the people who suffered the most under the regime, those who couldn’t leave quickly enough, as not even being equal to them.
The deification of Castro among “mainstream lefties” is matched, in my experience, by the myth a lot of people like my family have created of the idea that Cuba was just better when Batista ran shit. I don’t think it’s helped the Cuban rep in this case that Cubans have had powerful legislative champions, like Jesse Helms, the Díaz-Balarts, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, etc., while the wrong kind of death-squad victim (Nicaraguans or Argentinians or Chileans, to name a few) didn’t have a U.S. Senator backing their arrival and settlement.
Maus
@Menzies:
I find that absolutely fascinating, though. I wonder if some of the older Cuban Republicans are sick of being used as a pawn by the GOP (or just local politics), or wonder how they’re being softened, because while the newer generation of Cubans I’ve grown up with are generally liberal, I found many of their not-liberal-at-all grandparents to be surprisingly supportive of Obama.
Ruckus
@Warren Terra:
Warren
My point was that Harvard is not (as far as I know) using public funds. They in theory are trying to get poor people into their school, not keep them out. It works better for them if they don’t pay tuition for someone whose family can afford to pay. They are not mandated to provide education. They are not supposed to discriminate and generally paying tuition for poorer students can help them not do that.
Now on the other hand I believe your point is that anyone over 18 shouldn’t have to provide family financial info to go to school. And at Harvard I don’t see why they would, unless they want financial support. So the opposite question has to be asked, should there be means testing for public schools? FL seems to be trying to do that, of course they are doing it in a very discriminatory way, so I’d guess that money is not actually their first priority.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I stand corrected. Thanks!
Menzies
@Maus:
And that, in turn, is fascinating to me. I was one of two Obama voters at the Thanksgiving table for three years running, and everyone there knew I was a liberal after my great-aunt blew my cover.
They treated it as a youthful indiscretion and engaged me in debate, usually feeding me wine while doing it. I usually “won,” which is a really hard thing to do with my Cubans, since they’re used to arguments where everyone agrees with each other.
My grandmother can honestly tell you fuck-all about Democrats and Republicans, other than what she hears from me and from my uncle/godfather, and she hated Clinton, but she loved Obama. And I hate to be this simple about it, but I think it really was in her case that he’s a decent, honest guy with smarts and a great family. My dad can be a law-and-order conservative at times (though otherwise left) and hated Clinton because of the Lewinsky scandal, but loved Obama as well. And I mean they loved the guy, because his policy proposals wouldn’t apply as much to PR – but they found him, personally, magnetic.
kth
How do they know which applicants to ask for proof (assuming, as is almost certainly the case, that they don’t ask everyone)?
Lojasmo
As much as I hate to defend this, if my son wanted to claim residency in Oregon for college, we would have to provide proof of Oregon residency,
As I have said, I am a dense motherfucker.
Menzies
@Lojasmo:
That makes sense, though. The wrinkle comes with this question: would you have to prove that you are in the United States legally? (Or are you saying that the actual policy only requires proof of Florida residency?)
Pamoya
@Ruckus:
Exactly, and this is what makes the Florida policy different (and unconstitutional) compared to the general policy of private and public schools all over the country checking your parents income before providing financial aid. Checking parents income isn’t arbitrary, it is meant to make sure that aid goes to the people who really need it.
Samara Morgan
muslims.
when Our Crazy Ex-GF Israel drags us into WWIII by launching on Iran, i will be in an internment camp.
Happy NAOW, bitches?
peggy
@stickler:
Yes, Florida’s Cubans are parochial, are LEGAL and do not identify with other Hispanics. Remember that the original wave of refugees were the displaced upper class and they set the social tone.