I love how the California Supreme Court upholding a measure that was passed in 2001 has all these so-called patriots outraged. After Assembly Bill 540 was preserved, I heard so much talk about how illegal immigrants were robbing Americans blind, and I was surprised how ignorant these concerned citizens were.

Let’s get the facts first. The California legislature passed AB 540 in 2001 and allowed any student, regardless of citizenship status, who graduated from a California high school after attending three years, to qualify for in-state tuition breaks for college.

That’s it. The same tuition breaks that any other resident of California gets. Not free money, not federal grants, not a U.S. citizenship. Students get a reduced rate on school fees that they will be paying to the college of their choice. They will be paying money to a California school. Get it? 

Another fact that opponents of the 2001 measure omit in their protests is that these students are required to begin an earnest application for citizenship as part of the process. So the failure of legal immigration scholar Kris Kobach’s lawsuit to nullify AB 540 means we will still end up with another college-educated U.S. citizen? Nice!

Thanks to political campaigns like our recent gubernatorial election, undocumented immigrants were once again made into the boogeymen in advertisements in an attempt to distract us from whatever else is really going on. Fortunately, the results of the election have determined that the civil rights of California citizens, official or not, are simply not up for bid.

These proud Americans that decry any type of assimilation assistance for people without official citizenship misplace their good intentions. I absolutely agree that there must be some immigration reform, but not as a backlash against people who are currently living, working and learning side by side with us. Overseas immigrants are conspicuously neglected from enforcement patterns such as Arizona’s recent “show me your papers” tactics. Border control is a separate issue from deporting our friends and neighbors.

Despite efforts by Kobach’s recent lawsuit, and a suit filed in 2008 by out of state students, we are still able to integrate these de facto citizens in what could amount to a model for the rest of the country. There are already nine other states including Texas and New Mexico that have similar laws. We are on the right track here and when our lawmakers start focusing on mediating the injustices on both sides of the fence, we can arrive at lasting change.