“Dream Act”: Maryland Petition Gains Legal Victory

“Dream Act”: Maryland Petition Gains Legal Victory


MD GOP Wants Voters To Decide ‘Dream Act’


By Guest Blogger Richard Falknor @ Blue Ridge Forum

                                
“Judicial Watch today declares in their press release  “Illegal Alien Activists End Challenge to ‘Sufficiency and Number’ of [Petition Signatures] to Put Maryland DREAM Act to Voter Referendum” – -

“Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today announced developments in the MDPetitions.com legal action over whether Maryland voters will have the opportunity to directly consider ‘tuition benefits’ for illegal alien students. Pursuant to a Joint Stipulation signed on December 5, 2011, Casa de Maryland and illegal alien activist plaintiffs will no longer challenge the ‘sufficiency and number of the petition signatures’ collected by MDPetitions.com to place the repeal of the illegal alien tuition benefits policy on the November, 2012 Maryland ballot. The plaintiffs will continue to maintain that the Maryland DREAM Act cannot legally be subject to referendum.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Read the entire Judicial Watch release here.

In a related development, just last month the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky and Charles Stimson published an illuminating legal memorandum “Providing In-State Tuition for Illegal Aliens: A Violation of Federal Law.”

The two lawyers report:

“Federal law prohibits state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens ‘on the basis of residence within the State’—unless the same in-state rates are offered to all citizens of the United States.  Today, 12 states are circumventing this federal law, and the legal arguments offered to justify such actions are untenable, no matter what other policy arguments are offered in their defense.”

We may have missed it, but we have not seen support for the petition to referendum effort among major Maryland business organizations. (Scroll down here.) Moreover the House of Delegates GOP leadership had reportedly not expected the petition to referendum on SB167 to prevail among the voters.

The petition drive’s success arises from the hands-on leadership of freshman delegate Neil Parrott and the groundwork laid over the years by veteran delegate Pat McDonough.”