A story on illegal-alien students at state universities addressed the fact that they qualify for affirmative action, according to our current race laws; as my colleague Steve Camarota put it, “Almost everyone who would benefit from the DREAM act would also benefit from affirmative action.” This ridiculous situation, where the vast majority of immigrants are eligible for race preferences the moment they step off the plane, has been written about before, albeit infrequently.

What shocked me in this recent story was that college admissions officers give preference specifically to illegal-alien applicants:

University of Maryland (College Park) computer science Prof. James Purtilo told FoxNews.com that, during his time as an associate dean, he frequently saw admission officers favor students because of their “undocumented” status. “They favor students with special circumstances. ‘Undocumented alien’ would be one of these special circumstances… They help fill out the diversity picture for the admissions office.” “It was just the norm,” Purtillo added, “that obviously we need more of these students [undocumented aliens]… ‘this student has a real story to tell’ would be a common thing the admissions officers would say. Or that ‘they’re enriching the College Park experience.’”


In other words, in your college essay about how you overcame adversity, you get points for being an illegal alien! The whole debate over in-state tuition for illegals is beside the point — the more important effort is to bar illegal immigrants from taxpayer-funded higher education altogether. Heck, now that Eric Holder tells us that state’s can’t have their own immigration policies, we need to require all colleges, public and private, that accept federal student aid to verify the legal status of applicants and cut off aid if they admit illegal immigrants.