Daily Bruin columnist Negar Tehrani challenges the appellate court's decision in the Martinez v. UC Regents case, which seeks to overturn AB540 and deny in-state tuition eligibility to undocumented students. Unfortunately, as Tehrani expresses her support for what we here call
Underground Undergrads, she also falls into the anti-immigrant rhetorical trap that those pushing the Martinez case have set up, both in the courts and through the media. In her article "
Education should be a right – keep in-state fees for illegal immigrants", we are winning her support, but losing the messaging battle.
In the Martinez case, the plaintiffs (right-wing proponents of stricter immigration standards) set up a case where the legal status is at the forefront of what would otherwise would be a case on eligibility guidelines for out-of-state students, rather than California-raised youth. And they simplify it to fit their goal:
The federal statuses at issue in this appeal refer to "
aliens[s] who [are] not lawfully present in the United States." (8 U.S.C. SS. 1621 (d), 1623.) In place of the cumbersome phrase "aliens[s] who [are] not lawfully present," we shall use the term "illegal aliens".
That paragraph is part of a long footnote (#2) explaining why they reject using a more apt term such as "undocumented students". The rest of the case is
here.
But the term "illegal aliens" is nothing more than reductionist fearmongering, the general public is much less likely to respond to the plight of
illegal immigrants than that of
undocumented students.
The state of California has the largest population of immigrants in the nation, and they have diverse backgrounds and legal standings. There is the common 'my parents brought me across the border' type, the also usual 'we came as tourists and overstayed a visa' team, the media-friendly 'we were refugees because of a storm or earthquake' team, and stranger ones involving 3 or 4 countries, two fixed marriages, a soccer world cup, and Erik Estrada's real estate infomercials.
My point is, the possibilities are almost endless when it comes to the life stories and legal situations of undocumented students. Yet, Tehrani, in her defense of AB540, fails to mention this, and instead uses the reductionist term "illegal immigrants" a whopping fourteen times. Maintaining the same rhetoric, Tehrani calls AB540 a "loophole", as if AB540 was a hidden scheme, rather than one of the most prominent legislative decisions of the last decade. There was, in policy terms, nothing accidental or schematic about AB540. It was a rational decision to ratify that students who grew up in the state's educational system should be able to enter the promised land of achievement that all teachers and counselors preached in their K-12 years: higher education. And statistics from non-partisan policy think tanks have shown that the majority of the beneficiaries of this new tuition eligibility system are in fact U.S. citizens.
Not all is bad in the article. She shows a concern for global issues, and an understanding that education should empower all of us in an international scale.
Immigrant rights activists welcome all signs of support, but the fact that our supporters are framing our issue in this way is troublesome. In her most dangerous statement, she claims: "Granted, their parents do not pay taxes". Someone from
IDEAS at UCLA said they were faxing their tax records for the last ten years to her editor. As most undocumented students know, the IRS is one government institution that never discriminates. Interestingly enough, there is no court case challenging their eligibility for that. Isn
't that weird!?
Pass the DREAM ACT.
