As for illegal residents who graduate from a Texas college, I am not sure how that plays out. As you have pointed out, unless they were born on this side of the border, they are still in this country illegally.

An illegal resident of Texas that successfully graduates college as an engineer, nurse, teacher, etc.; is still illegal and unemployable.

I fail to understand how this state legislation is successfully putting illegal aliens into the legal work force.

I appreciate your position of being a Texan and having to deal with the problem of illegal immigration. You are right, especially when you say that people from other states or areas of the country telling your legislature what they should or shouldn’t do to deal with the issue. It is indeed a situation unique to Texas and it has to be dealt with accordingly.

One last thing. I would appreciate it if you refrained from name calling, even though you disagree so strongly with some of the other comments. I try to keep it as civil as I possibly can on the blog.

Rick Perry has made it clear that he thinks federal government should get the hell out of education and everything else that the Constitution bars it from doing (that’s what the 10th Amendment means; if it isn’t enumerated in Art I, Sec 8, then fedgov has NO POWER to do it; it’s ILLEGAL).

So. You want to talk about ILLEGALS? I can show you a crime cartel raping and pillaging for probably $10 trillion per year (on-budget, off-budget, and counterfeiting schemes combined). There are 545 illegals raping us all raw right now, and a bunch of damned Yankees want to tell the Texas Legislature not to let college-age Mexican kids get an education? What, YOU want to take them, then? Or have us ship them to just some bus stop in Mexico, without the rest of their family…most of whom do twice the work each day, of any welfare queen U.S. citizen?

Boy howdy, I just can’t take the stupidity of some people. It’s frustrating to discuss any matter requiring rational though or nuance with war-mongers or with xenophobes.

It’s sheer idiocy to say a government can, or should, ship kids off to the foreign country their parents came from, when they were brought here. Some of them were BORN here in Texas.

Read this article:

http://www.billspetrino.com/2011/09/15/real-story-rick-perry-state-tutition-illegals/

Then shove your ‘racial preference’ antimatter where the sun don’t shine.

I’am a legal immigrant myself who is now a US citizen with dual citizenship. As far as my experience you cannot obtain “legal” immigration status as long as you live in the USA. You need a visa to enter legally first and foremost, then you need to be sponsored for naturalization before you can even obtain “legal residence” status. So what I’m saying is, the only way this law could work if the definition of a illegal alien has changed to “resident” as Mr Rogers said.