I believe in education as a way to dramatically change one's life and open doors. But when we talk about limited public financial resources, like publicly provided financial aid and in-State tuition you have to deal with the issue of illegal aliens. Particularly with students at the State universities looking at 30% tuition increases over the next two years to off-set reduced State funding.

Each year many legal residents are forced to drop or delay their education due to the lack of financial aid funds and increasing tuition. Until that is resolved fully, it seems criminal to me to consider funding illegal or undocumented students.

While I understand that many of these students were brought here by parents and had no choice in the matter, that shouldn't shift the responsibility for their situation to the taxpayers. Mom and Dad put them in this bind.

In a perfect world we could get the other Washington to deal with the illegal immigration issue and the millions of illegal aliens here. But again just because they shirk their responsibilities doesn't mean the taxpayers should mitigate an unintended consequence. Even the Dream Act is just an end-around Congress not dealing with immigration.

We could play the "if" game all day. The bottom line is that higher education is still a privilege denied to far too many citizens to use limited public resources to educate those that are here illegally.

Just-Bob is right on. The Dream Act is a highly discriminatory program, against citizens. It is a high-cost boondoggle that really doesn't return anything to those who would pay for it - US. It is a poor investment and helps to pay for someone else to take over our own rightful place in the schools and colleges. Furthermore, it takes away a foreigner's incentive to learn our language faster, if at all.

My problem with this idea is that it slows down the rest of the classes. Native or fluent speakers are held back while the teacher and the few in the class who can't speak, understand, or write basic English, are taught at a slower pace in a language other than English.

Separate classes in English, paid for by the student's family, would be more effective for everyone, and the student would learn the language faster in a concentrated immersion course. That way, they are investing themselves and would appreciate the lessons more while working harder and would learn faster as well.

This should not, is not, a government or taxpayer problem. People who want to come here and live, need to assimilate and learn the language on their own time at their own expense. If I went to live in any other country where English was not native, that is what I would have to do. I would also WANT to do it, as a means of self-improvement and better success in that country.

Nick and Bob are right on.

As a child, my parents moved our family to a foreign country where Spanish was the primary language, and would you believe it, they spent several months attending classes to learn the language so that when we made the move. I know that an individual or family coming from a low income situation may not be able to pay for classes to learn English, but there ARE other methods of learning a language.

Having lived in a developing nation, I can completely understand why someone would want to move their families to the US. Even our poor have a standard of living that many in the world would consider opulent. But, as Nick said, to be more effective you HAVE to be able to communicate effectively.

Unfortunately English is a rather difficult language to learn, especially since Spanish is really a very efficient language.

This was an event that was closed to the public, why is that?

If I had been able to attend I would have talked about YVCC specifically since it was held at the campus.

To improve Latino Student's performance at YVCC, one of the primary moves would be to increase the number of Latino professors. At the present time, I doubt if there are more then one or two tenured Latino professors.

I still can not understand how an institution can be designated a Hispanic Servic Institution because of the high percentage of Latino students and not have more Latino professors.

To me, YVCC does not reflect the reality of the student population. In my case, I remember how important it was to see role models that one can relate to and provide support.

This is an issue that has been presented to the President by many Latinos before, including myself, but apparently she does not listen. One of the main reasons that she does not move on this is that the Latino students at YVCC are too timid to press for more Latino Professors.

I, for one would not recommend YVCC to any Latino student. YVCC is just too sterile.

Maybe that is why I was not invited to the event.

I am sorry, but, why would Latino students that speak English have to have a Latino professor? To make them feel more comfortable? Would having more Latino professors require the termination of employment for the non Latino professors? I suppose with the growing number of Latinos, eventually, the non Latinos will be requesting more non Latino professors.

I'd like to meet that girl in the maroon sweater. :) I took a spanish class in high school but I totally failed it. It was too hard or maybe at that time all I cared about was pot? Today I'd still be willing to learn spanish. I watched the TYSON documentary and he said he went Moscow and they had a parade for him there he said "They don't even speak English in MOscow". Im proud to be an AMerican a Native American at that and our language is almost gone. Me and my kids I teach em indian and spanish words that I know. I like to consider us tr-langual. Or whatever.

RE "To her, having more bilingual teachers is a necessity to spur higher learning for Latinos.

“Now I can understand almost everything,” said 46-year-old Bazadoni, an accounting and business administration major graduating this spring. “I had a lot of trouble with English at the beginning.”

WHY is it a necessity? Would Bazadoni now "understand almost anything" if she hadn't been forced to learn English purely through exposure to the English language? I fully believe in preserving language and culture, no matter what your heritage, but English is the primary language spoken in this country. It has been learned by immigrants having other native languages for many, many years now.

"The purpose of the tour is to ask people how Latino education can be improved and what the White House should do to help in those efforts."

WHY is it the role of the White House to improve Latino education? Is a college education not available to anyone who has the will and dedication to make it happen? Does the word IMPROVE mean to pave the way, make it easier or give advantage to one person over another. This woman wanted it bad enough that she did not let her language barrier stand in her way. It is pretty impressive that she taped her lectures, had them interpreted, learned the material and eventually learned the language. Why do we expect our government to do any of these types of things for us? What is wrong with hard work and a little struggle? The sense of accomplishment in the end is a lot more rewarding!

I agree with almost everyone here. Sorry Hector, I agreed with you another time, but this time we part. The point FreeToSpeak made is a key one for me.
Mrs. Bazadoni is a great example for those seeking the American Dream and taking it. Not just to Hispanics, but to anyone looking for the American Dream. To many in my opinion now want the dream handed to them without any effort other than crossing the border. You don't even have to learn the language now. We go more than half way to meeting the Hispanic community, more than any other immagrant community in my opinion, and we are still asked to put out more. Seems to be, that we are putting out more than we are getting back in this exchange to date and yet we are not doing enough in some peoples eyes.
Mrs. Bzadoni worked her butt off and succeeded and that is almost an after thought in this article. These are the kind of students and graduates we need, not the "it is to hard,make it easy for me crownd". What is wrong with hard work anymore? If it comes to easy, it is forgotten just as fast.
Just a thought, I could be wrong. Help me understand where I am wrong though.

Thank you.

Sorry, meant "Mrs. Bazadoni" in the last paragraph and "crowd".

Hit the submit to quickly!

We used to be a mixing pot of various immagrants which made something great, AMERICA! The last couple decades that mixing bowl of ingredients have not mixed to make something great anymore. Each ingredient wants to stay seperate now, which takes away from America's greatness. We call ourselves, African-American, Mexican-American, etc. etc.

History teaches us one simple rule; Each civilization needs a common goal or identity to survive, We are losing ours. Immagrants used to want to come here to become Americans, now it seems to some it is to come take advantage of America.
Have I just become to Jaded?

Sorry again, spell check failed me once again.

It should read Immigrants instead of Immagrants.