AB 540 - What's Wrong With This Picture?

If you have children or pay taxes in California, there are two things you should definitely know:

- The cost of tuition for Californians at University of California campuses has more than tripled in the last ten years (http://facts.ucdavis.edu/annual_fees_and_tuition.lasso).

- The cost of tuition for illegal alien Californians at University of California campuses, within the past ten years, dropped over 70% (http://tinyurl.com/3hxb46x).

As this blog entry is being written, each of the following is also true:

- A U.S. citizen from Phoenix, Reno or Denver, who took 12 units at San Jose State this past semester, paid $7254.00 in tuition and fees.

- An illegal alien who lives in Los Angeles, Watsonville or Santa Clara, who took 12 units at San Jose State this past semester, paid $2790.00 in tuition and fees.

- California community colleges, California State universities, and branches of the University of California, have substantially reduced the number of courses available and laid off staff members due to budget cuts.  The budget cuts have been in excess of 1.2 billion dollars.

- California taxpayers will be subsidizing, at a total cost approaching one million dollars, the reduced tuition rates available to California illegal aliens who take courses this coming year at Santa Ana College, Los Angeles City College, the College of San Mateo, and Harbor College.

- Full-time student tuition for an illegal alien in California, at UC Santa Cruz, will be $11,220.00 this coming year.  This is a substantially reduced rate that is $22,878.00 below the full price. For each illegal alien who attends UCSC and receives this discounted rate, California taxpayers will be paying the extra $22,878.00.

- Approximately 40% of all illegal alien college students in the U.S., live in California.  Every one of them that spent three or more years in one of our state's grade schools, and graduated, is legally entitled to taxpayer subsidized in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

Perhaps you're wondering how this came about.

In October of 2001, our state legislators in Sacramento passed AB 540. Assembly Bill 540 provides subsidized/reduced tuition for California's illegal alien college students (http://ab540.com/).  It was first implemented in 2002 and if you've been paying taxes in California, you've been picking up the tab for this since that time.

Currently, tuition and costs are skyrocketing at UC's and CSU's.  Lots of middle-class California families are having a hard time affording these increased expenses, or are seeing their children graduate with considerable college loan debt.

California Assemblyman Gil Cedillo

And how are our elected leaders responding to this crisis? California legislators in Sacramento are working to pass AB 130 and AB 131, which will provide scholarships, grants and loans to illegal alien college students (http://tinyurl.com/3fbn6b4). Governor Brown, when he hasn't been too busy advocating on behalf of tax increases to solve California's budget problems, has indicated that he intends to sign these bills into law when they reach his desk.


Check out the links provided in this blog entry. Read up on AB 540 and the "California DREAM Act," take a moment to look at the recent L.A. Times article about state college tuition increases (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/15/local/la-me-uc-tuition-20110715), and then ask yourself:  What's wrong with this picture?