Illegal aliens are put up on a pedestal in California, and the state's education system makes certain of that. UCLA is now hiring them as interns, according to Campus Reform:
The UCLA Labor Center’s Dream Resource Center is allowing undocumented students to apply for Dream Summer, a ten-week summer program that provides paid internship opportunities for immigrants in California, regardless of their immigration or insurance status. The program will encourage them to advocate for immigration reform and promote universal health care access regardless of immigration status.
The Center says the program began in 2011 after the U.S. Senate failed to pass the DREAM Act in 2010, which would have given a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who came to the United states before the age of 16. The program claims to have provided 418 internship opportunities to immigrant youth throughout the nation.
UC Berkeley and UC San Diego have a similar policy, according to the report.
California taxpayers already pay for illegal aliens to attend school via the Dream Act, and now at schools like UCLA, even more money pays for them to intern at the school to promote immigration reform and government-funded healthcare to illegals? Seems like a massive taxpayer scam.
While it's bad enough that they are further bleeding taxpayers dry, it makes it worse that UCLA is turning these illegals into activists for liberal policies:
Seth Ronquillo, a spokesman for the Dream Resource Center, told the Daily Bruin, “Many of the participants in the program go on to become the leaders of the immigration reform movement. By working in social justice organizations, they are given the resources they need to continue in activism.”
Campus Reform links to a piece at the Daily Bruin that goes into detail about an illegal named Katherine Herrera is advocating for government healthcare for illegals:
Through Dream Summer, Herrera is interning at the California Nurses Association, a labor group where she is working on advocating for universal healthcare for all Americans, with an emphasis on undocumented individuals.
“Everyone, even undocumented individuals, should have basic access to healthcare,” she said.
Last month, Herrera flew to Oakland to attend presentations on universal healthcare coverage and testified in front of Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas’ staff members about how her inability to receive healthcare as an undocumented individual took a toll on her family.
And then there's this illegal, who through the Dream Resource Center is advocating for comprehensive immigration reform (aka amnesty):
Magdalena Vasquez, an ally and fourth-year Chicana/o studies student who is now interning at Faith in Action Kern County, a church group that provides services for undocumented individuals, said she joined the program because she is interested in working in the nonprofit or advocacy sectors in the future.
She said she is working on promoting Senate Bill 4, a bill in the California State Senate that proposes to expand health care coverage to undocumented individuals.
“A lot of people (in Kern County) don’t know much about this law, so right now we’re working on getting more people informed,” she said.
So UCLA is turning these illegals into foot soldiers for the progressive cause. That is not appropriate for an educational institution to do.
The ending quote of the Campus Reform piece sums it up best:
“I feel that UCLA as a public institution in California was established to educated the citizens of California as well as the U.S. and legal international students, not illegal immigrants. By only offering these paid internships to illegal immigrants UCLA is not only hurting law abiding citizens who are of all ethnicities including Hispanic, but they are also promoting and sponsoring people who are breaking the laws of our state and country. [This] is ironic since some of their funding comes from the state in which they are advocating for people to break this state's law,” Alexis Moran, a second-year Hispanic student at UCLA told Campus Reform.
That's exactly right. UCLA, like any other school, is supposed to provide a fair, balanced and objective education for students to learn and form their own opinions on issues of the day. Instead, schools like UCLA serve as nothing more than progressive indoctrination camps to brainwash "young skulls full of mush," as Rush Limbaugh would say. This story is just the latest example of that.
In addition, as I have previously documented, California is already overly generous to illegal aliens and with stories like this, it seems like the state becomes even more generous to illegals to the point where some day anybody can just walk right into California and become a resident once they enter the state and then proceed to become to progressive voters.
Which of course leads to fiscal bankruptcy. It's just not right for us to be bending backwards for these illegals, even if these students were here through no fault of their own.