It boggles my mind and breaks my heart to see all four of the Republican candidates for Lt. Governor running against the Texas DREAM act. It isn’t surprising given the rhetoric against it coming from the current Republican base but it is still disappointing. What the Texas GOP needs most right now is a leader to help the base understand this good conservative policy. And since we have seemingly anointed Greg Abbott as our next nominee governor, that leadership role falls on his shoulders.

The Texas DREAM act is not at all like the Federal version with the same moniker. No citizenship status is conferred. Rather, it demands that children whose parents brought them to this country without going through the proper procedure apply for legal status. There are also residency requirements that they must meet. The reality is that the Texas DREAM act is more of a residency law than a pro-illegal immigration law as the rhetoric of the law’s detractors portrays.

The law, HB1403 from the 77th session, is very much a conservative Republican law, although it was authored by a Democrat, former State Rep. Rick Noriega. It passed the Texas House with only one Republican voting against it – former State Rep. Will Hartnett. It passed the Texas Senate with only three Republicans voting against it – current Sen. Jane Nelson, and former Senators Mike Jackson and Jeff Wentworth. It was signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry. Like I said, it is very much a conservative Republican law.

But in today’s political climate, some in our party want to place the “blame” for everything and anything that is wrong with our state and country on the backs of “illegals”. Look, I have no problem calling a group of adults that entered the country illegally “illegals”. There are competing studies on the negative or positive impact that they have on our society as a whole but that argument can be had another day.

I simply cannot call a group of children that had no choice in the matter of where their parents moved “illegals”. They are children, nothing more or less. There is nothing “illegal” about them.

Perhaps my perspective is different than some because my family moved around a lot when I was young. My parents never asked me or my brother if we wanted to be the only white children in the neighborhood or school when we moved to Houston’s Third Ward. Likewise they didn’t ask when we moved again to Pasadena, just a couple of blocks from the KKK headquarters. Believe me, I would have said no to both. But I didn’t have a choice. I was just a child.

We are educating these children in our public schools and that is also the right policy, immigration status notwithstanding. Otherwise we would have streets filled with uneducated children, much like the streets in New Delhi. It makes no sense to educate these children and then deny those that are capable of furthering their education the opportunity to do so. If a child is brought to Texas by his parents at a young age, and attends public schools K-12, we have already invested over $130,000 in him. Why would we then deny that child the benefit of resident tuition? Texas has no state income tax or state property tax. The only state tax is a sales tax, which his parents surely pay.

The rhetoric on this subject is just plain wrong. No one is denied in-state tuition due to the child of a person here illegally attending college. These children aren’t “taking spots” from the children of U.S. citizens. If children from other states want to access in-state tuition, all they need to do is move here and meet the residency requirements that these children have already met.

I wish that the Lt. Governor candidates would reverse themselves on this one but that isn’t going to happen – they are lockstep in their political strategy of reaching only one wing of the Republican coalition. Greg Abbott needs to separate himself from the Lt. Governor candidates and come out strongly in favor of this law. Not only for the good of the Texas GOP but because it is the right thing to do for these children and it is in the best long-term interest of the State of Texas.