Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) explains that under laws passed by Congress in the late 1980s, it is illegal for illegal aliens to work in the United States.
"That was one of the key provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986," he relays.
Because most immigrants were economic migrants at the time, meaning they were looking for better work opportunities, the law was meant to deter illegal immigration by making it clear to employers that there would be penalties associated with hiring illegals.
That law, however, has not been enforced all that well, and now, the University of California is trying to find a way to allow illegal immigrant students to work on campus.
But pointing out that allowing illegals to work right now could put those students at risk of criminal prosecution and then deportation, which could open the university up to fines and criminal penalties, possibly hurting future funding, university President Michael Drake has reportedly decided to postpone making a decision on this effort.
"California has been looking for workarounds for all sorts of things to accommodate illegal aliens," Mehlman notes. "Here you have a state that is blatantly attempting to defy federal law, and I guess the Board of Regents has decided they're going to take another look at it."
He says the state university system itself was the first to find a workaround for a 1986 law that said they could not offer in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens unless they also offered them to anybody else who showed up.
Meanwhile, as California is facing a huge budget deficit, the state is looking to extend publicly-funded health insurance benefits to illegal aliens -- something that was explicitly barred by the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
"That's part of the reason why California is inundated with illegal aliens, and that's costing them an estimated $31 billion a year," Mehlman submits. "They just simply don't seem to care what it costs the taxpayers; they're just going to accommodate illegal aliens."
